


The Law of Talion

by quicksparrows



Series: Side by Side – Chrobin [32]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Assassination plot, Gen, Mystery, siege
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2019-07-10 21:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 43,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15958181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: Five years after the death of the Fell Dragon, Ylisse has settled into a quiet but powerful peace, a halidom that has escaped the tumultuousness of the past decades relatively unscathed. Chrom becomes a more practiced and measured ruler year by year, and Ada puts war behind her to focus on her children and social callings. But not everyone is so happy; Plegia is calling for the reinstatement of its independence after years of Ylissean annexation, and Valm is still in tatters after being host to two war campaigns.After a sudden assassination attempt, the royal family and their allies find themselves on the precipice of a new war –– one taking place within the walls of their own castle.





	1. Snakes in the Grass

**Author's Note:**

> We're back, baby.
> 
> This will be another longer fic, one that I drafted a couple years ago but never really got around to. After touching on some political topics in Let No Man Tear Asunder, I figured it was time to tackle this story. While it's still gonna technically fall under Chrobin, this is probably going to be the most general story yet –– lots of ethics, revenge, espionage, political intrigue, betrayal, and so on. I also hope to bring in a few characters I've featured in past works and give them more emphasis. 
> 
> (And as always, there's some fun historical references in here; spot them! I'm going to try to leave annotations at the bottom from now on.)

 

❦

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I thought I'd find you here," Chrom remarks.

Though Ada scarcely looks up from her book, his voice brings a tug of a smile to her lips. She knows his presence, leant against the doorframe, his smile apparent in the tone of his voice. A rare moment of peace, no sons or daughters running around, no stewards or maids, no friends or family, just her husband looking in on her while she lounges in the bath. Her eyes coast over the paragraph again: _Amia, indeed, was beyond herself, for she threw herself on her back on the divan…_

"And what is so engrossing you won't even look up at me?" he asks.

Ada lifts her eyes.

" _Ribald Tales_ , _"_ she says. "Sumia finally wore me down. Listen to this: _'If someone does not come and quench the fire burning in me, I shall die,' said she._ Isn't that just the spirit?"

"A little tamer than I expected," Chrom says. He comes towards her, the leather soles of his boots light on the tile, and he leans over her. She angles the book so he can see, and he scans it while burying his nose against her scalp. He breathes deep into her hair. "… Or not."

"It's quite fun."

Chrom chuckles and presses a kiss to her temple before straightening up.

"You don't want to join me?" Ada asks. "I'll read it aloud and do all the voices."

"Will you die if I don't?"

Ada just smiles at him and he laughs in such a way that his entire head drops, his gaze momentarily hitting the floor.

"I _wish_ ," he says. "The Plegian diplomats are here in two hours, and gods, if they had even a scrap of power, they'd be trying at war. As much as I'd love to listen to dirty stories in the bathtub, I'd best assure them that this is for the best."

"You don't want back-up?"

Chrom shakes his head. Despite being due downstairs, he crouches down on his side of the tub so they're eye-to-eye. Ada's attention leaves the book entirely.

"As much as I would love to watch you run circles around them, I don't want you and Aversa in the same room, if it can be avoided at all," he says.

Ada sets it aside on the tiled ledge. She turns in the tub and leans her arms against the edge. They're almost nose-to-nose. He leans in the slightest bit more to nudge hers.

"I'm not sure I want her in the same room as you, either," she says.

"Well, I promise you she's very much not in the flirting mood right now," he says.

"Oh, so she's finally taking her role as a diplomat seriously?" Ada replies. "Is she finally ready to work with us to make Plegia a nation, rather than just a loosely organized––"

Chrom leans to kiss her and she is duly silenced, and if she's being honest, far happier that way. Still, when he breaks away, he shushes her:

"Don't," he says. "If I only have this much time left with you this morning, we're not going to talk about politics."

"Of course," Ada hums. "Save your strength."

"And what are you doing today?" he asks. He stands up, and when she's slow to answer, he folds his arms. She likes the look of him that way, a little bit cocky, a little bit ready to tussle with her. Ada smiles.

"Laying low," she says, and she lets the book rest over her nose for a moment. She considers her words again for a moment, and she says, a little more soberly. "And I'm going to talk to Libra."

Chrom's smile flickers, and he leans against the edge of the tub again. He lets out a sigh.

"Right," he says. "I thought that was tomorrow?"

"Today's the day," she confirms.

Ada decides it's time to get out of the tub, so she sets the book aside on the ledge and stands up. Chrom watches her for a moment, and then reaches for her towel, and by time she's up, he's wrapping her in it. 

"Let me know how it goes, okay?" he says. She clutches the towel around her and he runs his hands up and down her arms, rumpling the fresh linen. "I'll try to get a recess around lunch, you can pop in and keep me updated. And tonight, we'll talk to Tharja together."

Ada nods.

"Sounds like a plan," she says. "I think it'll go fine, though. We're not really saying anything they can't have seen coming."

"Right," Chrom agrees. "Thank you for handling this, love."

"Any time," Ada says. She leans into him a little, smiling. "But I won't say no if you want to make it up to me tonight with a little comfort and succor."

Chrom pulls her in, entrapping her in his arms and the crisp wool of his jacket, and when he cradles her naked body against him, she could just melt. All these years and her heart still picks up when he embraces her so. He kisses her forehead and runs his hands down her and gives her a little extra squeeze.

"I'm so, so glad our marriage works," she tells him. "I don't think I say that enough. I am so glad we _work_."

Chrom chuckles.

"Me too," he says. "Five kids, three wars, how many crises. And we could still go for more."

Ada laughs and reaches up to put a hand over his mouth, and he kisses her palm before the takes it back.

"Don't even suggest more kids," she says. "The twins are enough!"

"We can get more wet-nurses," he says, voice dipping into teasing, but she knows there's a thread of genuine want there. "What's one more? Two more? Ten more?"

"I'd never leave the bed!" she laughs. And then she chides: "I have to get dressed. And you're going to be late!"

"So what?" he murmurs in her ear. She can feel the smile on his mouth when he starts nuzzling into her temple, pulling her up against him so closely. "Come on. We can try to beat our record."

"You're a terrible influence," she says, and for a fleeting moment, she lets the prospect of sprawling out in bed on top of him thrill her. Wouldn't it be perfect? She could read _Ribald Tales_ to him and tease him until he can't help but throw her on her back, and the two of them could forget Plegian diplomats and discord and crumbling relationships and ––

He strokes her cheek with his thumb. She laughs under her breath and lets her gaze fall.

"Or not terrible enough?" he teases.

"It's not every week we have Plegians baying for your blood," she says. "Or other people's marriages to consider."

"Gods, you're right!" Chrom says, as if he ever truly forgot. "Normally my weeks are _that_ much better."

"Shh," she says, thumbing his lower lip and then kissing it right after. "I'll talk to you tonight, okay?"

"Tonight," he says.

And then he pulls away, leaving her standing in the bathroom wrapped in a damp linen shroud, feeling warm all over and utterly prepared to face the day.

 

❦

 

The air is intermittantly crisp in the castle this morning, and with her hair still damp from her bath, Ada feels it like a hand on the back of her neck. As she walks down the hall, she takes note of open windows, no doubt meant to coax in the last vestiges of summer, and she flags down servants as she goes. One by one, the windows vanish behind shutters as she passes.

"We all miss summer already," Ada says, hearing a maid sigh as the sun disappears behind the shutters. "But we'll miss it even worse when we're all sniffling through colds."

The shutters click into position, one by one. Maids curtsy as she passes, skirts fanning out, and servants bow their heads.

Before she heads down to Libra and Tharja's home on the castle grounds, she goes to get breakfast with her elder children. Lucina and Morgan are their usual selves, equal measures of serious and chipper both, and they amuse themselves with word games and riddles and debates over who amongst them would win in this or that scenario. Lucina means to head into the city for the day to do some shopping with her friends, and Morgan will be sitting in with the Plegian delegates for his own education. Ada feels so proud of her children; Lucina for learning to relax and enjoy herself, Morgan for applying himself in earnest. After that, when the crumbs are dusted from the corners of her mouth and her children are both rushing off to their commitments, she heads towards the nursery to see her younger children.

Frederick catches her halfway down the stairs. She spots him from a distance and he turns his attention to her with the raptness of a bloodhound. He plants himself at the base of the stairs.

"Ada," he says, rather jovially. "I was hoping you'd spar with me this morning."

She smiles but carries on her way.

"If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, Frederick," Ada says. "I have––"

" _Given up the blade_ , yes, I know," Frederick finishes for her, but he hardly seems deterred, falling into step behind her. Retirement –– or at least as close to it as Frederick will get –– still isn't enough for him, and the sideways step to the role of seneschal doesn't seem to adequately fill his need to serve. He follows her down the stairs, taking them two at a time: "But you know, as I have told _you_ a thousand times..."

She stops short, and he does as well. He towers over her, and still she can pluck the words from his mouth:

" _I may not wish to wield a blade but a soldier without arms may yet die upon them_ ," Ada recites. The corner of Frederick's mouth curls, as it does every morning. Ada smiles, too. "Yes, I remember. Do you have a new cause for me?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," Frederick says. "I was thinking –– your renewed focus on magic has certainly improved your footwork, your grace. It would lend itself to swordsmanship. You may find it much easier to pick up now, and I know how much more you enjoy learning something when you already have those base skills."

"Nice try," Ada replies, smoothly. She reaches to clap him on the arm, and Frederick shakes his head at her, less at her, she's sure, than his inability to convince her. "I'll see you at dinner, Fred."

"Give it some thought," Frederick says.

"I promise I will!" Ada says, and she will, but she knows she will come to the same conclusion she has for some time now: in her heart, she is a mage, and in peacetime, her swordarm has far more use holding a child.

 

❦

 

The staff who look after the nursery are some of Ada's favourite people in the castle, a crew of six women ranging from nineteen to sixty-three. Ada loves these women and protectors of her children as family. The lot of them are an effusive bunch, well-suited to small children, and numerous enough that none should feel too stifled from their own personal pursuits. Gone are the days of Nurse Nan, rest her soul, and old women forgoing their own marriages and families to raise another's.

The eldest, a firm but fair woman by the name of Jonquil, greets Ada first every morning with a rundown of the night and any noteworthy moments, even when Ada might have been present for many of them. It's fastidious and exactly how Ada likes it, the minutae of events chronicled as neatly and clearly as events on a battlefield, and she often finds herself perusing these notes the same way she might review engagements in wartime. Raising children, Ada has found, is little different from mustering an army.

By time she's been given the report, of course, she already has her children crawling all over her. Ryn is eight, bright as a button and enthusiastic to be involved in everything she can get into, and itching to have her own room outside of the nursery. The twins are four and growing like weeds, Lowell reading well already and Cadia wild and unpredictable. The three of them greet her with open arms and shrieks and clumsy kisses, and Ada sweeps them up one by one to cuddle.

A decade ago, Ada would have considered two children, maybe three. Five seemed unfathomable. But unlike many friends who had taken the twist in time and their once-future children as a reason to hold off on having more children, Chrom and Ada hadn't let much break their stride.

In motherhood, Ada has found an aptitude, a greater reason for being beyond war and wifedom. In wartime they were a beloved reason to work harder, strive further. Perhaps before she might have scoffed at the idea of children as a strategic advantage, but they were just the same. 

It was one thing to make a better world to live in with the love of her life. It's another thing entirely to make a better world in which to raise their children, and pave a prosperous future for them.

"Do you have any particular plans for the day, milady?" Jonquil asks.

"I do, indeed," Ada says, bouncing Cadia on her hip. The girl is giggling, her bright hair dishevelled and curling no matter how many times the nurses or her mother combs it. "I would love to spend the morning here, but there are some matters I need to attend to with friends."

"With friends?" Cadia repeats. Lowell perks up too, eyes bright. "Can we come, mummy?"

"It's serious business," Ada says, and she gently bops her daughter on the nose. "Maybe the ladies will take you out into the gardens to play while I do that, and then we can go visit your father when I'm finished."

Cadia sticks out her lower lip.

"No pouting," Ada says.

They all head down together, Ada and a couple nurses and the three little ones. It's slow going with Lowell and Cadia's little legs, but they're getting a little big to carry. (Given her occasional fainting spells, Ada has never been permitted much to walk about with them in her arms, anyhow.) They're even slower taking the back routes out of the castle; with the Plegian delegation visiting, Ada has no interest in marching the royal children in their vicinity.

Ylisstol castle, of course, has multiple gardens –– the vegetable gardens, the back gardens, the flower gardens, the orchards –– but the garden the children play in are the private ones, a little walled-in court only visible from balconies and windows within the castle. There the children run wild, shrieking and trailing toys. Lowell tries to run with a wooden hobby horse between his legs, and Cadia plays some sort of keep-away with Ryn, desperately trying to keep control over a leather ball. This past summer, they'd often be joined by Lissa's youngest, but now Lissa and her little one are back at the royal family's eastern palace for the season. It doesn't stop Ada's children from asking, however, and Ada thinks it'll be a long few months of asking _when when when_ before Lissa is back for Yule. 

"How many months is that?" Cadia demands.

"Well, we're in September now, and Yule is in December," Ada says. "How many months between September and December?"

"Three!" Lowell shouts.

"That's much too long!" Cadia protests.

"It isn't too long," Ada says, but she supposes three months is an eternity to a four year old. "It'll be Yule before you know it."

"Do we get to meet the baby at Yule too?"

"Which baby, darling?"

"Uncle Owain's baby!" Cadia demands.

"I think so," Ada says. "She'll be big enough to travel, so you can meet her. Won't that be nice?"

"No! I'm still mad I didn't get to meet the baby before," Cadia replies. Ada snorts, looking down at this little child and her mussed-up hair, and Cadia just stares back up, a frown consuming her little mouth. Such indignant fury in such a little person!

"Be mad if you like, but you won't be visiting Plegia any time soon," Ada says. She gestures at the garden, laughing. "Go play, child."

At first it seems like Cadia will stick around to quarrel, but Ryn shrieks that she's found a brown snake on the other end of the garden, and so all the children become immediately preoccupied in chasing it down. Ada stays where she is, watching them carry on. 

"If we can catch it, can we keep it, mother?" Ryn calls.

"Ask your father," Ada calls back.

"It's hopeless, then," Ryn tells her little siblings. "We'll just study it!"

The nurses chuckle. Ada can't help but smile too. In the grand scheme of things, Chrom may be far more likely to spoil them, but he's also far less tolerant of that kind of silliness, regardless of whether the child is fully grown or still in nappies.

Ada wonders how he's doing, handling the delegates. Years of practice and effort have transformed him into someone who can clear a proposal or development as easily as a battlefield, but his temper can still get the best of him, most especially when Plegia is involved. There's little she can do out of court, however, so for now, Ada tries to oscillate between playing with her children and planning her approach to speaking to Libra. 

She glances up at the sun. Tharja will be out by now, she hopes, having buried herself in her work with curses and hexes in the alchemist's cellar. Well safe enough to talk to Libra without his wife leaning over his shoulder, Ada thinks. Maybe it's time.

Cadia reaches for her pant leg and winds a little hand into it, and tugs until Ada looks down at her.

"Mummy, can I please please please please come with you today?"

Ada considers this for a moment, and then she crouches down to her daughter's level. 

"Alright," she says. "On one condition, my darling, you may come with me. You must keep quiet and not interrupt, alright?"

A tall order for her wildest child, she knows, but it's important to give children opportunities to prove themselves, and knowing Cadia, she'll be so off in her own world that much of the discussion will sail over her head anyway. Still, Cadia nods, if not a little excessively.

"Yes yes yes," Cadia says. "And after can we go see Daddy?"

"Yes," Ada says. "Afterwards, we will all go see your father."

 

❦

 

"Let me knock," Cadia says, a little bossy. Ada gives her child a tiny tug on the earlobe. 

"Ask nicely," she says, firmly. "What do you say?"

" _May_ I knock, _mummy_?" Cadia repeats, harmlessly bothered. Ada smooths her daughter's hair back and nods.

"Go ahead," she says. "But you keep our bargain, hmm? Quiet."

Cadia raps on the door with both sets of knuckles, gleefully tapping out some children's tune. Ada sighs, a little mirthfully, and she scoops Cadia up under the armpits and takes her up in her arms. Cadia settles against her hip, feet swinging, snickering at her own antics.

She can hear footsteps behind the door, and the shuffling of a wooden doorcatch. Despite knowing Tharja's schedule well enough, Ada is still relieved to see that it is Libra behind the door when it opens.

"Ada," he says. "Good morning!"

"Good morning," Ada says. 

"What brings you down here at this hour? Not to dissaude you of your company, but…"

He knows. There's a moment between them ––  _I know you know that I know_.

"I thought I'd surprise you early," Ada says. 

"A good surprise, at the very least," Libra says, turning his attention to Cadia. He leans in to kiss the little girl on the crown of her head, and Cadia chirps her hellos and digs her knees into Ada's midsection to lean into Libra. "How long has it been since I've seen you, little one?"

"Four hundred million six hundred thousand forty twenty seven days!" Cadia says.

"An eternity," Ada says. She gives Cadia a squeeze. "I'm glad I didn't surprise you at a bad time, then."

"No, no," he says. "Service isn't until this afternoon, so I have all morning for you."

Libra looks tired, but that is not particularly unusual — his long and willowy features have always lent themselves to a resting sadness, an exhaustion with the world's troubles. Ada wonders how many little lines in his face were wrought by well-meaning friends unburdening themselves, and how many by his wife.

Tharja will be a large subject of discussion today.

"Is she out all day?" Ada asks.

"Tharja?" Libra replies.

"Yes," Ada says.

Libra looks at her, and the corner of his mouth turns up wryly.

"I've been anticipating you coming to me about her," he says. 

"In part," Ada says, and it's perfectly true. "I mostly want to talk about you, old friend."

"Old friend," Libra repeats, with a touch of amusement. "Have we gotten old?"

Libra's heavy-lidded gaze falls on the child on her hip. Libra watches Cadia for a moment, and Ada sees his mind churning behind his eyes. Is he wondering what it would be like for Tharja to fall pregnant, her black silk bodysuit stretched taut over a distended belly? What it would be like to have a second child, this one potentially more troubled than the last?

"It _has_ been a while since we last talked about this."

A while is relative –– these conversations have been stretched out over the years, dotting their friendship like holidays, though certainly much more pleasant to see pass. Given the nature of Libra and Tharja's marriage, it's been an unfortunate necessity. How many times have they sat together on this subject?

"Well," Libra says. "I suppose we're getting older with every passing strife... but _me_? Somehow I don't think Tharja is too far from that conversation, anyhow."

Ada supposes that's true, too. 

"We can go for a walk, if you'd like," she says.

"No," he says. "You'd better come in. I won't have you carrying that child to and fro, not when she's getting so big."

He steps aside to let her in, holding the door wide open. Ada enters. Their house is modest in size, but fastidiously decorated; it seems every time she visits, the place is a little more packed full of books and candles and leather cases and linseed-oiled wooden boxes, pots of this-or-that and curious things Ada could only describe as _objects_ , things with no known purpose, even for art's sake. Libra seems positively out of place amongst it, but he moves amongst it like he doesn't see any of it, existing on another plane. There is the divine, and the arcane. They're never as good of a match as they seem. 

He shows her through the front hall. A rickety staircase with a bannister strung with vines stretches out by their path, but Libra leads her through an archway into a parlour. It's a little room, the only window letting the morning sun pour in, the walls hung with paintings.

"Wow mummy, look," Cadia says, suddenly. She doesn't point so much as thrust her chubby little arm in a direction, and Ada glances at the painting. A canvas framed in gold hangs above the couch, bearing a painting of a woman decapitating a man. His face is contorted, screaming, and the woman bears down on him with a blade, face twisted in concentration. Ada feels herself sighing.

Cadia barrels on: "What's she doing to that man? Is she killing him?"

Gods.

Ada glances at Libra. Libra sighs deeply.

"Ah," he says. "It's an ugly story, little one, an old one from before Ylisse or Plegia. A woman earns the trust of her enemy and then brings his head to her people, inspiring them to rise up against his empire."

"I don't like that at all," Cadia says.

"It's dark," Ada says. "It's new, too."

"Yes," Libra says. "I thought it would be a little grim for a parlour, but."

He stops himself there and makes a little gesture –– _you know how she is._ Ada nods. She looks back to the painting. The woman's arm is stock straight, with the barest sense of tension; she imagines the painter might have drawn inspiration from a butcher carving a turkey, rather than what kind of force it might take to behead a struggling man. Hardly surprising, at any rate. The castle's walls are lined with similar paintings, war scenes where soldiers march in crisp uniforms, heroic portraits of a clean-faced Chrom and his father and grandfathers before him. Typical.

"What's grim?" Cadia asks.

"Something depressing," Ada says.

"Mummy!" Cadia scowls. "What's depressing?"

"Something sad. Now shush, I have something very important to talk about," Ada says. She sets Cadia down on the couch. "If you sit quietly, we'll go see your father at court straight away after."

"I'll be quiet," Cadia promises, but she scoots to the edge of the couch as if ready to pounce.

Ada returns her attention to Libra, who is still looking down at the girl fondly. He looks like he might want to reach out and stroke her hair, cup her round cheek and tell her stories –– gods know he's done it on so many other family occasions.

"Tea?" Libra offers.

She curls the corner of her mouth in a smile, and he does the same.

"Yes, please," Ada says. 

He excuses himself, and Ada sits down next to her daughter. Cadia has her neck craned so she can still look up at the painting, and Ada feels that if her four year old is going to be look at paintings of spies beheading their enemies, at the very least it's not a terribly realistic one.

"Mummy," Cadia asks.

"Yes, baby."

"When we see daddy at court, can we bring him back here to see this painting?"

"Why?"

"I dunno, I just want him to see it."

Cadia prattles on in this way a moment, but when Libra returns with the tea tray, she mimes the stitching of her lips and settles down quiet again. (Ada likes that cheeky obedience sometimes. It may drive Chrom up the walls, but Ada thinks it shows character.)

"I know exactly why you're here," Libra says. "And I do appreciate it, Ada, that you look out for me. But my resolve is as firm as it's ever been."

Ada mulls that over for a second.

"We don't have to go over all of it again, Libra," she says. "We've said all of that before –– you deserve to be with someone you love, you're not responsible for another lifetime or what happens in your absense. You know every point I might have, and you know I love you dearly, my friend."

Libra continues pouring tea. He doesn't look up for a moment, and then he does, through the long blond hair that has fallen in his face. He passes Cadia a little bundle of cookies wrapped in cloth.

"So what's changed now, Ada?"

"She nearly killed Noire," Ada says. "The situation in your household has gotten too dire to ignore."

"She nearly did," Libra confesses. The painting of the decapitation looms over his head, the woman's gaze seemingly falling on Libra's own skull, her consternation fixed. "But for me, it is reason to be here; look what happened when I left for a couple days."

"Plenty happens to Noire even with you under the roof," Ada says. "And plenty happens to you, too."

Libra glances at Cadia, who seems somewhat oblivious to the whole conversation, too busy arranging cookies in a row on the edge of the table.

"I don't mean to put too fine of an edge on it, Libra," Ada says. "But you know it's the truth. Tharja does as she pleases regardless of whether you're here or not."

Libra seems to draw himself up at that, sitting a little straighter.

"I know you always have a room prepared in the castle," he says. "I suspect Ryn would have had it a year or two ago if it weren't for this pitiable situation… but I know you don't offer it with the intention of inviting her too."

"Not the way things are, no," Ada says. "Or ever, if we're being honest. But she won't get a say in the matter."

Libra frowns. He hunches a little in his seat, and Ada reaches across the void. He welcomes her, even taking her hand between his. His palms are callused, unbefitting a man who has not seen war in so many yearrs and never intends to again.

"She'll have her say in the matter regardless of what the rest of us think."

"Not this time," Ada says. She plucks herself up. "Chrom may send Tharja back to Plegia."

Libra looks surprised, and perhaps not entirely prepared for what this entails. He pulls his hand from Ada's, quick but gentle, and he hovers on the edge of his seat as though he might even want to stand up and walk away.

"This was the last straw, then," he says.

"She's stepped on too many toes," Ada says. She doesn't want to sound apologetic, at least not for Tharja's sake. "She's been too hostile, too aggressive. Nobody can look away anymore, even if you'd like them to. Chrom won't tolerate it much longer, though if you would insist on following her with Noire, I am willing to see if I can hold him off."

"I appreciate that," Libra says, "but I would not want to create tension between you and your husband. If that is truly the Exalt's will, then it must be done."

Ada nods. She has little desire to plead Libra's case to Chrom for Tharja's gain, particularly in this political climate, but she has even less desire to see Libra depart for Plegia. It would put him beyond their influence, and worse, leave him as a Ylissean in potentially hostile territory.

"When our relationship with Plegia is so dire, the last thing Ylisse needs is a Plegian woman causing controversy," Libra says.

"You're right, but you know that Chrom and I have you and Noire as our primary concern," Ada says. "Sending her away this way is just… well, it's a way of shifting the blame from you. It'll be my fault. She can hold me responsible."

Libra seems more troubled by that than assuaged. He stands up now and walks the length of the room, his slippers soft on the stone floor, and Ada watches him come and go.

"She'll see through that."

"Don't worry about that part," Ada says. "I just want you to think about leaving her, and whether you're ready for that."

Libra doesn't say anything about that for a moment, and Ada watches him think. Surely it's crossed his mind recently, considering everything with Noire, but she knows — she understands — how difficult it must be. After all, it wasn't too long ago that others might have accused her of being a similar threat to her own family, or accused Chrom of putting too much stock in a woman who perhaps couldn't be brought back from a brink. Things have changed. Wouldn't it be hypocritical to say that Tharja is any less capable of change than Ada ever has been, no matter what violences they've commited, no matter what sacrifices they've made?

But a _desire_ to change, that's something else entirely.

"Chrom would like to speak to Tharja tonight. I understand that's a short amount of time, but I think you know the answer already."

Libra looks back at her, and standing in front of the one window, his features look blown out, pallid. He hasn't been sleeping well. He nods now, though.

"I know," he says. "In my heart, I've known this for some time. I thought it the other week, when Noire was recovering, that it's time to end this. But how?"

He shakes his head.

"It's difficult to move onto other things after trying so long to make this work. What would I even do, Ada?"

"You'd open that orphanage," Ada says.

Libra smiles a little at that, and he turns his gaze to the window again.

"I could," he says. He pauses. "But I don't know. Even when things are at their worst, I think about the long days the three of us spent in the library, you, Tharja and I. How our eyes would ache from the long hours reading all the tiny print, translating runes back and forth, trying to interpret something, _anything_ of value from the madness."

Those had been long days. Not necessarily the fondest, in Ada's memory, plagued by a sense that time was running out and that Grima would take her if they didn't find an answer soon, but there had been a certain pleasure in it. All those ancient texts were something to bury herself in, and Tharja and Libra had been excellent guides into the depths of dark magic and lore of the dragon-gods. It hadn't been the solution, but it had given her comfort, and answers. It was the closest she'd ever been with Tharja, too.

Sometimes she thinks her brittle friendship with Tharja could have blossomed into one of strength and reliability had Ylisse's relationship not soured with Plegia in such an unexpected way, but that's behind them now. Tharja had taken Ada's disappearance very personally, and there was no taking any of that back, either.

"She did a lot for us, then," Ada says. "She was a very good friend to me, and a good lover to you. But we don't live where she lives, Libra, not truly."

"Of course," he says.

There's another silence between them, one punctuated only by Cadia munching on the cookies, and Libra comes back over to the couches and sits again. He finally picks up his tea, busying himself with it for a moment, while Ada ruminates on how ugly tonight will be if Libra truly is okay with this.

"I struggle to wrap my mind around her presence in our lives," Libra says. "It's true that she has a charm about her. People can't help but be terribly fascinated by her, and the things she does. It is difficult to imagine a life without her… and yet, sometimes I can't bear this a moment longer."

"Can I eat _all_ of these?" Cadia interjects.

"Cadia, shh."

"Yes," Libra says. "You may."

And then there's the sound of a door opening, and Libra and Ada both stiffen involuntarily. Cadia scarcely notices, too focused on devouring the cookies. Libra and Ada both rise. Tharja appears in the archway, and for a moment she wears the briefest, flickering expression of surprise before settling again, her porcelain-smooth face neutral, her eyes dispassionate. 

Ada watches her calculate and feels her slow, building frustration. _She knows that they know that she knows…_

"Another one of _those_ conversations?" she says.

"I'm afraid so," Ada says.

"I see."

"Tharja, we'll be speaking with Chrom and Ada at the castle tonight," Libra says. Ada would be pleased to hear this if she wasn't concerned by what Tharja could subject him to the moment she leaves, but Libra, as always, seems calmly unbothered. "Why don't you come sit, and we'll talk a little now?"

"Not interested," Tharja replies. "It's not going to make a difference one way or another."

"I really must insist," Libra says.

"Insist all you want," Tharja says. "I'm just here to get something I forgot, and then I'll be out of your hair. Don't wait up for me tonight, either."

"You'll want to come tonight," Ada suggests.

Tharja fixes her attention on Ada. Her blunt-cut bangs obscure the top half of her eyes, leaving her with a near-permanent glare, and Ada can feel the ice in it now. That look is about as close as Ada gets to feeling intimated by Tharja, but still, Ada feels disinterested in being challenged. This is how things will be.

"Listen," Tharja says. "If you care at all about _my_ feelings in this, the least you can do is not subject me to _that_ conversation."

"I do care about your feelings, but after all the stress you've put everyone through, and how you've treated your daughter and husband, having that conversation is the least you can do."

Tharja scoffs, but she softens, too, shrugging a little deeper into her cape and lowering her chin. 

"You don't care," she says.

"I do care," Ada repeats. "And that's exactly why I'm here. You need time to sort things out for yourself, don't you?"

Tharja looks away entirely.

There's a knock at the door. Ada pauses, lips pursed, and exchanges a look with Libra. Tharja folds her arms, rooted to the floor, and Libra leaves to answer the door.

Ada looks to Tharja, who watches her in turn, utterly docile.

"Good thing you didn't send Chrom this time," Tharja says. "I'm willing to listen to _you_ , but with him? I would have made good on my word, you know."

Ada doesn't bother replying. They both know what Ada would do if Tharja even opened her mouth with the intent of spilling some hex in Chrom's presence, and despite their conflict, Tharja still knows there are some lines to toe.

"Ada," Libra says. "There's an urgent message for you. Come at once."

He looks rattled, which Ada duly notes.

Ada glances at her daughter, and unwilling to leave Cadia alone with Tharja even just a dozen feet away, she takes Cadia's hand and bids her to come with. From the hall, Ada catches sight of Stahl, his face red and his chest heaving. She draws herself up taller. Whatever this is, it isn't good at all.

"Stahl," she calls. "What's going on?"

When she reaches the doorway, she finds Stahl flanked by no less than two dozen fully-armed knights. In unison they bow, short and clipped, and pivot their lances to their left sides, at attention.

"Ada," Stahl says. He lets out a long breath, and he almost vibrates on the spot, he's so discomposed. His voice comes out sharp:  "There has been an assassination attempt on the Exalt. Frederick sent my guard retrieve you and your daughter."

Ada feels herself flood with fear, but she takes a deep breath and collects herself carefully.

"What happened? Is he alright?"

"Badly wounded, milady," he says. "We should go immediately."

For a moment, Ada isn't sure what to say. She barely registers Cadia's little whimper, her little hand gripping hers tighter. It feels as though the world around her shrinks, vanishing into some meaningless abyss, and she thinks of Chrom leaning over her in the tub, his eyes warmer than the water she'd been submerged in. She thinks of the thrum of his heartbeat as he'd held her, and the way he'd moved, _whole._ Badly wounded. _Badly_ wounded? What does that mean? An assassination attempt got _that_ close? Gods ––

She catches the attention of the nearest knight with naught but a look, and she steers Cadia out front and center. "Carry her, please."

She starts down the steps, folding into the ranks of the soldiers with only a terse look back at Libra. To her surprise, he follows her out.

“I’ll come with you,” Libra says. Ada feels an immediate sense of relief, and she thinks she sees it on him too, prepared to exit this wretched conversation.

If only what they were headed for were even the slightest bit less wretched.

 

 

 

❦

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annotations:
> 
> \- Talion is an obscure English word holding that punishment should be identical to the offense committed; the law of talion is retaliation authorized by law.  
> \- The painting in Libra and Tharja's parlor is an expy of Caravaggio's _Judith Beheading Holofernes_ (1598-1599). Ada isn't much of a fan; she would probably like Artemisia Gentileschi's 1614–18 version more.  
>  \- The text for Ribald Tales is taken from _The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival, The Belle of the Delaware_ , an absolutely filthy (and fun) "autobiography" from the early 1900s. It's available for free on Project Gutenberg.  
> \- Tharja and Libra's relationship was discussed briefly in A Pyrrhic Victory; we'll be seeing a lot more of Libra in this story.  
> \- Lowell and Cadia are named for Marth and Caeda; originally I just called Cadia "Caeda", given how natural it must be for royal families to reuse names over and over again, but I felt it was a little strange to people, so I chose a different name.


	2. Bedside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ada rushes to her husband's side after a failed assassination attempt.

.

 

 

 

 

Years ago, with dark magic coursing through her and an evil hand digging its claws into her mind, Ada had nearly killed Chrom herself.

She had plunged lightning into his breastbone, right over his heart. The smell of seared flesh had lingered in her nose for a week after, acrid and metallic, but at the time, she’d been barely conscious, near blinded, numb from head to toe. What was left of her in that moment had one singular focus: it had to be as real as theater. Spellbinding to an audience, laborious to its performers. A stage death.

They'd all played their part, including Chrom, collapsed on the ground, unmoving.

And Chrom _had_ lived, of course. She had, too, though she’d also lived under that dark influence for some time after. She had long wondered if that influence had tempered her in some way — shouldn’t she have been beside herself with grief and guilt, having even _thought_ of doing such a thing to the love of her life? Was nothing sacred, even in wartime? Was that Grima’s influence, too? Was it a lack of memory? Why?

Was it just a way of having control?

Now, striding across the castle grounds with a growing fear in her heart, Ada feels at risk of being unmoored. Fear has flooded her, and maintaining what control she can keeps her head above water.

“How bad is it?” she asks, finally, as they march to the castle doors. The autumn air feels unfriendly now, too crisp. She wants to get inside as soon as possible.

Stahl swallows his breath.

“I think you’ll have to see for yourself,” he says, finally.

“No, I want to know exactly what I’m preparing to see,” Ada says. “Is he conscious? Was it poison? Is he bleeding?”

Stahl’s mouth bobs open and closed silently, and Ada barrels on: “Is he going to _survive?_ ”

“Ada,” Libra interjects, gently. His hand finds her shoulder, even as they walk, and Ada stops in her tracks.

“I need to know,” she demands. She feels the urge to grab Stahl, to shake him out of his professionalism and demand he show fear or panic for his Exalt, his friend. She could do the same to Libra as well. She paces two steps, wresting herself from Libra's grip, and the soldiers shadow her, starting when she starts, stopping when she stops. Libra rounds her and blocks her path from doing it again.

" _Ada_ ," he repeats, tersely.

Cadia bursts into noisy tears. Ada pushes her feelings down and demands calm of herself.

“I haven’t seen him, so I don't want to make it sound more dire than it is,” Stahl assures her. “He was lucid last I heard. I don’t even know where they struck, but he _was_ attacked, and he's lost a lot of blood. He's being cared for in the West tower's stronghold. We'll go there now.”

Ada feels herself steadied by this information, though not relieved. The West tower is secure, but not terribly heartening –– it's always been a part of contingency plans for serious threats, and Chrom being taken there suggests to Ada this isn't going to be over any time soon.

“And the assassin?”

“Escaped,” Stahl says. 

That changes everything. Ada immediately sets off again, veering around Libra. The party follows, the whole of the guard becoming a chorus of clanking metal and thunderous boots and Cadia's wails.

“A change of plans, then,” Ada says. 

"Ada?"

"We’re collecting the children from the nursery," she says. "Where are Lucina and Morgan? Does anyone know?"

"Morgan is with Chrom, and Lucina still hasn't returned from the city," Stahl says, and then suggests: "The guard can transport the children when the castle has been properly secured."

“Absolutely not. I won’t have them under simple guard while an assassin is loose, and I certainly won’t have them apart from Chrom right now, not if there is any chance he may die.”

She's almost alarmed at the way it comes out of her mouth, that miserable word at the end like copper on her tongue, but there it is. 

They cross the grounds swiftly and through the front doors of the castle, where a heavy guard has already been mustered. Ada leads them through the broad hallways, noting but not acknowledging the throngs of people pressed up against its walls, nobility and servants and dignitaries alike all under careful watch. She could hear pins drop in the great space, or at least she could if Cadia were not sniffling loudly behind her.

The worst is yet to come.

 

❦

 

Ada arrives at the nursery to find the door heavily guarded, a fact which fills her with great relief. She can hear Lowell crying inside before the guards can tend to the door for her, and when she enters she finds all the nurses waiting anxiously for news. 

"Is everyone alright?" Ada asks, breaking the silence. She gives everyone a once-over regardless in the search for her children, and she spots Lowell in the head nurse's arms. Jonquil has to clutch Lowell tighter when the little boy leans very abruptly out of her arms.

"Mommy!" Lowell cries.

Ada moves straight to him and takes him into her arms.

"Darling," Ada murmurs, and she shifts Lowell to her hip; Lowell clings to her side like a tick. "Where's Ryn?"

"Here," Ryn replies from where she is curled up on a couch, nose in a book. When she looks up, she looks unsure. From that alone, Ada knows none of them know what is happening. No child of Chrom's could manage to read in the midst of crisis. 

"Come here," Ada says, and Ryn comes and fits herself to her hip. Ada pets her head and turns her attention to the nurses again.

"Lady Ada," Jonquil says, relief heavy on her voice. "We've been told the drawbridge is being raised shortly. Are we under attack?"

Ada doesn't particularly feel like sharing the news when she knows so precious little herself, but there isn't much that can be done. She doesn't need to, perhaps –– she just looks at Jonquil, and whatever is on her face must reveal the gravity of it all.

"There's been an assassination attempt on Chrom," Ada says. 

There's some attempt amongst the women to reserve their gasps and sighs, but precious little can hide such fear. Ada swallows her breath and bounces Lowell a little higher on her hip.

"We're still sorting out what's happened," Ada says. "Suffice to say, yes, as per protocol, the drawbridge is going up. Any of you who wish to leave will need to be escorted out immediately — those who wish to stay or have no lodgings in the city may remain. We'll be mounting the guard to ensure everyone's safety best we can."

" _Is_ it safe?" Jonquil asks.

"I imagine there is no target on your back, as long as you are not of royal blood," Ada says. "The children will be coming with me. That should free you of any risk of danger."

The nurses look between themselves uncomfortably. There's an undercurrent on their breaths: poor babes.

"I'll stay and tend to the children," Jonquil offers.

Ada nods.

"Thank you, Jonquil," she says. "I'm going to take the children to the tower; I'll leave you to gather their things. The rest of you may sort out your affairs. There will be a guarded escort out, so decide and gather anything you might need swiftly."

Ada puts out a hand for Ryn, who takes it without blinking. Ada marches them out, the guard falling into step around her again as she goes. 

"Why is this happening, mommy?" Cadia asks, eyes wide and glassy.

"A bad person is in the castle," Ada replies. Ryn is slow on the stairs, so she slows a touch impatiently; they're much too big to both carry, however, and a guard steps in to take Ryn up instead. "Thank you. But we're all going to be very brave, aren't we? We are stronger than any bad person."

"Why are they here?" Lowell asks.

"They want to kill your father," Ada says, briskly. Her twins and daughter both fall very quiet, eyes fixed on her, but Ada remains resolute. "They already tried, which is why we are going into hiding."

"Is daddy going to be okay?" Cadia asks, lower lip quivering.

"Yes, baby. They've injured him badly, but you mustn't be afraid. Do you know why I'm telling you this?"

"Why?" Lowell asks.

"So we know what to be brave against?" Cadia offers.

"Yes, baby," Ada says. "So you both can be brave."

 

❦

 

They meet Cherche at the foot of the stairs to the tower. She has a ribboned lance in hand and held at attention; not her usual choice in weapon, but perhaps one more suited to a castle under seige, and that tells Ada plenty about their situation. It says even more that Cherche looks notably troubled, and when Ada and her escort approaches, she takes on a tight-lipped smile.

"Ah, you're safe," she says, to some relief. Her smile dissipates again just as quickly. "Come. Your husband needs you."

"How bad is it?" Ada asks.

Cherche's tensions grow.

"He'll live," she says, which strikes Ada as about the least confident assessment she's ever heard. Life is quite relative, as they all know quite dearly.

Ada turns to Stahl.

"Will you see that Lucina is found and put under guard?" she asks. "Or if it is safe to do so, return her to the castle?"

"I'll do my best," Stahl says, and he glances at Cherche. There's some swift communication between them just between their eyes, and Cherche nods. Stahl and the  guards not carrying children depart with a curt bow, and Cherche turns to the tower door's guards. When they open the double doors, Ada slips in without hesitation.

The doors close again behind the little lot of them. The slam of the thick oak into the frame feels less secure than it should, and the dim and windowless tower staircase makes the castle feel immediately foreign, and the sparse torches do little to dissuade that feeling. Ada has toured this part of the castle only once, and that was so she would know it if their family ever had use for it. She had hoped they never would.

"This is spooky," Ryn says.

"So it is. Someone's going to break their neck falling down these stairs if they don't put more torches in here," Libra says. 

Ada mutters a spell under her breath and a palmful of fire alights in her palm, and Libra does the same. They have a tedious climb ahead of them. Ada tries not to think about Chrom being carried up all these stairs, but the image comes vivid when she sees the dark droplets on the stone.

Ada feels Cherche's hand on her shoulder.

"Courage," Cherche says.

"Thank you," Ada says. "Thank you both."

They climb in silence otherwise, the steep steps carrying them in long, slow circles. The tower is quite wide, and Ada finds herself drawing up an imaginary guard for it –– narrow fields of vision, tight formations, little mobility. There are no alternate routes up the tower save for scaling the outside, and Ada thinks it is as good of a fortress an Exalt can get with the walls already breached. The apartment upstairs is fortified well, and by now there will be archers on the roof, and the flying guard will be mounted. Ada makes a note to have the line tested.

By time they reach the upper flights, Ada feels a little winded and the children still largely silent. It's been too long since war, Ada thinks, even though it's a bit of a dark thought. There was a time where they were all up at dawn for drills rather than for crying children or lazy morning romps, and that time feels distant now. They're all more skilled now, more experienced, more battle hardened, and yet a certain spryness has gone. Ada doesn't feel as agile.

For so long her life had oscillated between war and peace, war and peace, war and peace, and every time her world shifted back towards war again, she'd seen it all coming a year or more in advance. And true, things were on the up again: riots in Plegia, the struggling population demanding Ylisse's departure from their borders, the diplomats heralding the start of many long, arduous peace talks before war would inevitably kick up again. She'd just thought –– either naively or arrogantly –– that there was still time.

She had never, not for a moment, imagined the next war would start with an assassin right in their home, or that the first notes of war would be a blade in her husband's body.

Were they really so unprepared? Did they get _complacent_?

Finally, they reach the top. A couple guards cluster there, parting to make a path when Ada and her party approaches, and Ada spies Morgan standing at the door.

"Morgan," Ada says. She's relieved to see him, and yet alarmed the moment he steps foot into the stairwell. Morgan runs right into her, locking his arms around her so tightly that she very nearly trips backwards down the stairs, but she isn't about to scold him. "Sweetheart."

"I saw it happen," he says, rapidly, muffled into her chest. 

Ada eases him off of her so she can keep moving.

"I want to hear everything," she says. "But after I've seen your father."

She enters with some hesitation, worried that at any corner she will see her husband, mangled in a way she's reluctant to have in her memory. The tower is small, two floors and an attic, rooms loosely divided by curtains and sparse of much in the way of furniture. It would be spacious for a single family to live in, but as it is now, dozens of guards, servants, clerics and associates of their family are moving to and fro, transforming the space into a living space, a war room and a hospital all in one. It renders the space so cramped that Ada feels her heart hammer even further, thinking about how long they might be holed up here. 

And despite the chaos, she hears Chrom well before she sees him.

"Where are my children?" Chrom calls from somewhere within. "Where is my wife?!"

Ada moves in his direction, drawn by his voice and fear alone, but Frederick cuts into her path and catches her by the shoulder. She stops.

"Ada," he says, gently. "A word, first. So you're prepared."

She is so relieved to see him that it's almost overwhelming. She's not sure who moves first, but suddenly he embraces her, firm and reassuring. He seems like he needs it, too, undoubtedly as shaken as she is, helpless to undo what has happened. She pulls away when she realizes Frederick's front is stained with blood. The crisp white of his shirt is soaked completely through, and his pants darken down one hip where it has run. His gaze follows hers down, and then he draws her attention right back up with his hands on her forearms.

“Come now, girl,” he says. “Steady yourself.” 

For whatever reason, that grounds her, at least enough to take a deep, careful breath.

“I'm steady,” she says, even though she doesn't really feel that way, and she stands back. “Tell me.”

Frederick doesn't look particularly worried, but she knows any worry at all is just what peeks out above the waterline. He shakes his head. Chrom bellows: “ _Where in the seven hells is my wife?_ ”

Ada wants to start towards the voice again, but Frederick holds her firm, so all she can do is look in the direction of the drawn velvet curtain. Frederick steers her straight again.

“The assassin caught him in the thigh," Frederick says. His voice drops low, private. "It was deep, and certainly would have been fatal without Maribelle's quick thinking. But he will live, and with any luck, still be able to walk."

That snaps her attention away from Chrom, and paradoxically makes her want to get to him even more.

" _Walk?_ " Ada demands.

"Steady," Frederick urges her, hushing her. "This man has picked himself up many times from killing blows and hardly broken his stride. Don't fret about that yet."

Ada lets this settle. She doubts much could impede Chrom, either, but her heart hurts at the prospect. She notes Frederick's voice, low and careful, and thinks Chrom almost certainly knows she's there. She hears him now, calling her name: _Ada! ADA!_

"Does _he_ know that yet?" Ada asks.

That gives Frederick pause.

"I don't imagine it's settled in yet," Frederick says. "I do not want that to be his concern right now. Go, calm him."

Ada nods, and as Frederick releases her, she's already moving. She rushes to the curtain and ducks in, almost faster than Maribelle can draw it for her.

 

❦

 

Chrom is laid up in bed, where he should be, but he seems intent on getting out. (Not that he's getting terribly far.) When he realizes Ada is there, he stops, and for a moment they just stare at each other, stunned. He looks terrible, almost unrecognizably washed out, and it makes his eyes even more vivid. He's dressed in only his undershirt, and it clings damply to his skin; the rest of him is hidden by sheets drawn up to his waist.

"Where the hell have you been?" he demands. "I've been worried sick––"

"Easy," Ada cuts him off. She rounds the bed to him and takes him by the arm to ease him back into place, gingerly as she can, and Chrom settles down again. He is ventilating hard, teeth grit. She's not sure she's _ever_ seen him quite this pallid.

"Some–– some assassin came out of nowhere, I barely saw him coming. There was a bit of a tussle, and he had me under a blade before I could get Falchion unsheathed, he just–– he was _fast_."

She can see it well enough in her mind's eye, Chrom on the ground, all attention encircled around him bleeding out while the would-be assassin escapes. How fast did Maribelle swoop in? Who ran after the assassin? Did Frederick just pick him up and run? She looks around the room –– Chrom's coat is thrown unceremoniously over a chair, the pale blue wool stained almost black with blood, brighter patches spread along it and drying in beads on the fur trim. 

"They took off. _Gone_. I've never seen anyone move so fast."

Ada takes a deep breath. _Calm him,_ Frederick had said. _Calm him._

"Gods, Chrom," she says. She clutches his face then, and he's clammy to the touch. She feels him exhale, a little ragged, stressed. "Shh. It's okay. You don't have to explain, just — breathe."

"I can't believe I let this happen!"

"It's not your fault," Ada replies. "Easy, love."

She knows he won't be convinced that easily, but he's too exhausted to argue much further, sinking back into the pillows again. For a moment he just breathes through his teeth, and she feels every rise of his chest.

"Are _you_ okay?" he asks, finally. It's almost a demand.

"Yes!" she exclaims. "Other than the heart attack I nearly had, I'm fine."

"Thank the gods there weren't more of them," Chrom says. 

Ada nods; that's a sigh of relief both of them can share in. Still, it occurs to him how uncoordinated this seems –– if you want to kill a monarch, why do it in the most crowded room possible? And if you only have one strike, why go for the leg? And even after all that, how would one successfully escape the most watched man in the room?

It doesn't make sense.

"What did he look like?" she asks.

"I don't know," Chrom says, tersely. "I haven't the faintest idea. Maybe he was a noble?"

This perplexes Ada, but Chrom seems so bothered by his own inability to remember that she doesn't want to press him on it. He looks a little green in the face, and given the full glass of whiskey on the side table, he's not allowing much for pain. Ada sits next to him as carefully as she can, hip against his better side, and she holds the glass to his mouth.

"Here," she says. "Bottoms up."

"Where are the children?"

"They're fine. Drink," she orders him.

Chrom brings a hand to steady the glass and knocks it back. He coughs on the end of it but finishes it.

"The little ones are here, Libra is tending to them," she says. "They're frightened but safe. Lucina's safe in the city."

She doesn't know that for sure, but she's not about to say otherwise, lest Chrom tear himself from bed and lose the other leg trying to find her. Even so, Chrom seems calmed by the information, if only slightly. Ada shifts in a little closer to him, carefully as possible, and he grips her arm so tightly she thinks she might bruise later.

"It hurts worse than anything," Chrom says. " _Fuck!_ "

"Can I take a look?"

"If you want," he says.

She picks up the edge of the covers, lifting them and peering down into the dimness. Someone's cut his trousers off, leaving just his braies. His left thigh is wrapped tightly, and despite the thick padding under the linen bindings, it's bled through anyway. Even hidden away, Ada can guess at the length of the slash and decides to replace the covers.

"It must have been deep," she says.

Chrom nods.

"It felt deep," he says. "I barely got a look at it –– there was so much blood, and I couldn't see it around my trousers anyway. I think I passed out when Frederick carried me upstairs."

"I wouldn't be surprised." She brushes his bangs from his face; they're sopping wet, plastered to his skin.

"Morgan talked me through all of it. He did good –– I didn't think he would keep it together at first but he did."

"Well, the two of you keeping it together at the same time probably saved your life," Ada says. "We've lost soldiers to far less just because they panicked."

Chrom just hums and closes his eyes. Ada pours him another whiskey, half a glass this time. He's probably lost enough blood to take the edge off faster than normal, but she doesn't want him drunk, either.

"Do you want to see the children?" she asks. She continues ruffling his hair as he downs the second glass. 

"I don't want them to see me like this," he says. "But I should see them."

Ada isn't terribly fond of idea of the children seeing this, either, but she doesn't feel particularly inclined to deny them if the worst could still happen. Ada stands and moves to the curtain, and she beckons to Libra. All the children turn at the same time, Ryn rushing over first and the twins in hot pursuit.

"If any one of you go near your father's wound, you'll _all_ be out of here before you can even blink," Ada warns, as the littler children are ushered in.

Still, Chrom looks relieved to see his babies, and as soon as the little ones are in reach, he takes their hands in his and is greeted by a chorus of noisy tears from all three of them. Ada lingers to watch, but when she catches sight of Morgan waiting, she gestures to Libra again.

"Can you supervise?" she asks. "I need to figure out what's going on."

"Of course," he says.

Ada runs a hand over Morgan's hair.

"Let's go talk with Frederick, hmm?"

 

❦

 

Frederick isn't too far, hovering by a narrow window, evidently waiting for her to reemerge. Morgan in tow, Ada beckons for Frederick to join her, and she leads the pair of them up the last flight of stairs to the upper level of the apartment. There are no dividing walls or doors up here, either, just another series of curtains, and Ada peeks in all of them before she finds one that is relatively empty. The maids setting up inside scurry out.

"How is he?" Frederick asks, the moment the curtain falls behind him.

Given he knows exactly what state Chrom is in, the unspoken question is actually _how are you?_ but Frederick surely knows she doesn't want to talk about herself right now. The last thing she wants is to think about her feelings, because the moment she does that, she has to face reality. 

Ada sits down on a crate. The moment she does, she feels her energy fade.

"It's bad," Ada says. "He looks awful. I'm stunned he's alert."

"He's lucky to have survived the blow," Frederick says. "Luckier still that it didn't hit a major artery. Adrenaline will carry him through the next bit, but we shouldn't be surprised if things start looking worse."

"Gods," Ada says. "And to survive the recovery –– he'll need even more luck on his side."

Frederick nods. Morgan looks deeply uncomfortable, mouth bobbing open but nothing to say yet. For a moment, the three of them are silent, and Ada just watches Morgan, his lost expression, his worry, and the blood staining his shirt, too.

"He's not going to die, is he?" Morgan asks.

Ada shakes her head. Morgan's well old enough to know that's a foolish question, particularly from a boy who has experienced just enough of the battlefield to understand how precarious a wound can be even in the best of circumstances. For a moment she wants to snap at him –– _you saw it for yourself!_ –– but she draws a deep breath and says, as pragmatically as possible:

"He could, Morgan. He could die."

Morgan's expression crashes, but his jaw squares a little more. He shakes his head in rejection. Somehow, it has the opposite effect on Ada, who feels she has said too much; Ada feels the gravity of it all hit her, all at once. Ada isn't sure why –– _come now,_ she reasons with herself, the moment she feels the first swell against her lower lashes. She has to keep it together, and realistically, Chrom has survived worse. But still, a fear coasts over her, because after ten years together she has seen at least a dozen assassins come to collect him and before now, not a single one had marred so much as a single hair upon his head.

This one came within inches of severing arteries so important he really might have died right there, on the floor of his own castle, just an hour ago.

"Ada," Frederick says, voice softening. "Ada, my dear, Chrom will be fine. Dry your eyes."

"Gods, it's just..." Ada trails.

"He has survived worse," Frederick reminds her.

He folds one of her hands between his and gives her a firm, compassionate squeeze. "Come now. You must pull yourself together. Your children cannot see you so distraught. They'll need their mother's strength, and Chrom will not rest if you are upset." He pauses. "Morgan, go fetch a wet cloth for your mother."

Morgan nods. Frederick produces a handkerchief for her and he blots at her eyes himself before she just takes it from him to blow her nose. Her heart hurts. She drags herself together as laboriously as if she were assembling this whole castle herself.

"Thank you," she says. She takes a deep breath, holds it, and then exhales, as deliberately as she can manage. With what feels like the worst of the feelings purged, she sits up a little straighter.

"You're all red," Frederick says. "Deep breaths now."

Morgan returns with the cloth. Ada wipes her face down too, holding the cool water to her skin until she feels less red, less unpresentable. She feels like a fool for a moment, too, having a meltdown in front of her son, but when she removes the cloth, Morgan is looking at her with sympathy. 

"I cried too," he admits. "It was kind of embarrassing."

"Yeah?" Ada replies. "Well. That's over with then, hmm? We have a whole castle to be strong for. We can cry about it when we're all safe and sound."

Morgan nods. Ada kisses his forehead. These days she doesn't have to lean down to do that.

"Tell me what you saw."

"We were in court," Morgan says. "It happened after we recieved the Plegian delegates. There were all these introductions, and then everyone was out of their seats to mill around and socialize. Father was standing with Aversa and talking to her, and everything was really tense, really quiet. There were so many people, I wasn't close enough to hear what they were saying to each other, but they seemed really polite, at least."

Morgan pauses.

"She was standing real close." He looks a little sheepish suddenly, and he looks up to Frederick: "Should I tell her?"

"Tell me," Ada says, and though Frederick surely knows he's been overruled, he shakes his head.

"She was holding his hands, both of them." Morgan says, "I thought she was going to kiss his knuckles like you're supposed to but she didn't bow, she kissed his cheek."

Ada has seen hundreds of women get too friendly with her husband –– it's just a  reality of being married to the Exalt, really, and though she doesn't like it, she has never felt threatened by it –– but Aversa is particularly troublesome to her.

"Is this relevant?"

"Yes," Morgan promises. "I think it flustered him, he tried to pull away but she was still holding his hands, and then he was attacked. He couldn't draw Falchion fast enough. There was a scuffle; I think he saw it coming and tried to avoid it."

"So Aversa clinging to him hindered him from defending himself properly," Ada says. "That sounds planned."

"Maybe," Morgan says.

"I don't think so," Frederick says. "That just sounds like Aversa pushing boundaries. If she wanted him dead, she would just do it herself… and murdering the Exalt wouldn't gain Plegia its independence back."

"I'm not counting it out," Ada says. She couldn't possibly count it out, not when Plegia has hardly been a site of rational politics throughout her entire life. She's not sure it ever has been, or that any nation of death worshippers ever _could_ be.

After all, Aversa still worships the same tenets that brought Plegia to ruin over and over again. Even a new Plegia without Grima will fail to grow, Ada believes, as long as any part of Validar's rule remains –– perhaps including Aversa herself.

And then: "What's going to happen now? What happens with court? What do we do next?"

Frederick looks dubious for a brief moment, and Ada realizes he has no more experience with this situation than she does. For a wild second, they are all completely at a loss, and then Frederick says:

"We need to maintain control of the situation. We need to not only have someone representing Chrom on the throne, but also find out who is behind this attack and put a stop to it."

"I'll do that," Ada says. 

Frederick seems perplexed for a moment. 

"Correct me if I've misunderstood you, Lady, but it sounds to me as though you want to go downstairs and handle this yourself."

Morgan looks at her with some alarm. Ada frowns. She had thought that would be clear to everyone from the beginning; if the overtures of war have begun, then she wants to be right there with her fingers in everything. But still, Frederick looks dubious at best, and Morgan looks poised to say something but unable to really articulate it. 

"That's exactly what I intend to do," Ada says. "I can't sit bedside while someone downstairs plots to kill my husband and children."

"You don't think they have designs to kill _you_ , too?" Frederick asks.

"Why would they?" Ada asks. "You said it yourself, I can't formally rule, so I'm not in the way. If they were smart, they would have had Chrom and I and our children attacked at the same time, but they didn't. It also can't be personal; the public doesn't know anything about my role in the Grimleal war."

"That's an assumption," Frederick says. "This isn't the Plegian public. What if this is an attack by Validar's surviving agents? They could want you dead just as much as him."

"Then I'll find out when they try," Ada replies. "But someone has to be down there, and it's not going to be any of my children."

"I don't want _either_ of my parents to die," Morgan interjects. 

"I will do everything in my power to prevent that, love," Ada says. "Your father is perfectly safe here and I will be safe downstairs with a guard."

"That doesn't mean anything," Morgan says. "They managed to attack Father anyway!"

"Morgan," Ada says, raising a hand. Morgan falls silent, though he doesn't look too happy about it. Ada turns her attention to Frederick: "How do we make this happen?"

"The spouses of Ylissean rulers are generally not so easily afforded such a privilege, Ada."

"I'm his tactician."

"And unless Chrom formally declares war, you have no jurisdiction to intervene," Frederick says. "And even then, just because Chrom let you do whatever you liked on the battlefield doesn't mean you can run rampant across court, now, does it?"

Ada feels a bit of a smile curling at the corner of her mouth, and Frederick shares in it for a brief moment, too. Seriousness ensnares them both again just as soon.

"And we don't have cause to declare war," Ada says. "Not yet, anyway. It's not like we can even declare war on Plegia, not when they're our own territory."

Frederick nods.

"Annexing Plegia comes with its own unique difficulties. But we can still make you regent –– we'll just need Morgan's cooperation."

"Me?" Morgan doesn't sound terribly happy about that, either.

"Since Lucina is trapped outside the castle right now, that means you are next in line," Frederick explains. "As the eldest, you are to act in your father's stead now––"

"I don't want to rule," Morgan says, immediately. His eyes are round like coins, worry alight on his face. For a moment, Ada sees him as the skinny little boy he used to be, rather than the young man he's become over the past few years. That fear is just the same, it doesn't change no matter how much baby fat has vanished from his cheeks.

"If you abdicate on these duties, then it passes to Ryn, who is too young to rule alone," Frederick says, patiently. He fixes Morgan with a leading look, and Ada watches the pieces fall together on Morgan's expression, which sours immediately.

"If I say no, then you're going to be regent for Ryn," Morgan says, crestfallen. "So you'll go downstairs and act on father's behalf."

"I'm sorry, baby," Ada says. "But we need to do this."

"I'm not a baby anymore," he says.

"I know," Ada says. "So I'm sorry, Morgan, but this is how it has to be. And you've still got an important duty –– you're the eldest, and you'll need to be here to look after your little sisters and little brother, and be here for your father."

Morgan looks ready to storm off, but after a moment of hesitation, he nods, a great big scowl on his mouth.

"I'll take care of them," he says, finally.

"Thank you," Ada says.

Without another word, Morgan excuses himself, vanishing behind curtains. Ada listens to the thud-thud of his boots down the stairs, loud even above the general hum of noise around the place. For a moment, both she and Frederick are silent, and then Frederick shakes his head.

"For what its worth, I feel safer with you down there too… but you still won't be able to do it alone," he says. "You'll need a guard of your own."

"I already know who I want."

"Let's muster your company, then," he says. "But Ada, one thing."

"Hmm?"

"If you are serious about this, you know Chrom won't rest well."

"He won't rest well knowing the situation is in any less capable hands," Ada replies.

Frederick nods. There isn't any more to be said on the subject after that. It's just time to get ready.

 

 

❦

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annotations:
> 
> \- Cherche is promoted and uses a lance in this story; proper weapon distribution is important. :)  
> \- Early drafts had Tharja at court with Chrom when he was attacked, but it felt too tight for timing; Aversa will have her own considerable role in the story so it felt right to slip her in even sooner.   
> \- Frederick and Ada have had a few years to put together a stronger relationship; I like to think his role in this story will be largely focused on being a guardian overseeing everything, someone Ada can rely on first when she needs someone to look after Chrom in her absence.  
> \- Plegia has been annexed by Ylisse in the wake of the war against the Grimleal; this will be very relevant. This is considered a war crime today, but historically annexation is a little more vague; there's some idea that annexation is at least partially voluntary, but realistically, how voluntary can it be when the agreement to be annexed follows a long military assault, the decimation of one's people, collapse of one's government, etc?   
> \- Chrom references "seven hells" in the Golden Gaffe; that is a lot of hells.


	3. I Will Die Before You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ada sets some plans in motion, to both defend the stronghold and mount their attack.

.

 

 

Once, they'd faced down Walhart inside a castle. 

They'd flattened his armies and destroyed his garrisons across the whole of Valm, and it had all come down to this moment –– the great conqueror Walhart, cornered at the end of a long hallway, deprived of all but four of his soldiers. Ada had marched the Ylissean army in, snuffing out the lights as they went, leaving Walhart and his four riders alone at the end of a dark hall.

Walhart had mocked them. _Do you think I'm afraid of the dark? I'll strike down any soldier you dare send at me. They can't hide from me._

It was true, at least in a sense. It could have been a stalemate, the Shepherds marching forward, the Conqueror's reinforcements hot on their heels. Only their flying mounts could hope to reach them in time and engage, but it would leave them open to counterattack if they could not return to the safety of the darkness.

"Call the pegasus knights," Ada had said.

Cordelia had moved overhead, mounted on a black pegasus, her presence only known for the gust of wind from those great beating wings. With a sudden burst forward, she met the light, low in the saddle.

Like a theater audience, the whole of their army sat raptly in the dark, the illuminated dais a stage for the slaughter of Walhart's remaining men. And slaughter, Cordelia did — in one decisive strike, she took the soldier's lungs with a thrust of a lance, and the soldier's horse screamed as it, too, fell under the great thrashing of wings and hooves and teeth and blade. 

And then she'd flown back, vanishing into the darkness, leaving Walhart and his remaining men to brace themselves for the next swift, uncatchable strike. Within moments, the other men faced the same fate, one by one, leaving Walhart alone.

Chrom had punched Falchion through Walhart's breastplate like it was made of tin, and the great hulk of a man had bled out onto that same dais, a corpse, his army asunder.

Frederick had reached for Ada's shoulder, his grip tight under his gauntlets. With some pride, he had said to her, low and impressed: _This is why you wanted the horses trained to fly into the dark._

Ada had nodded.

_I knew it would be useful someday._

And true, it had been.

Ada has a plan for everything.

 

❦

 

When she pokes her head back in to see her husband, she's both relieved and worried to find him passed out. With any luck, he'll be calmer, and put less stress on himself, she supposes. Her worries abate somewhat more when she sees the twins are napping too, both pressed under one of his arms like peas in a pod. For a moment, Ada pretends it is a lazy summer afternoon, Chrom snoozing under a tree with the little ones without a care in the world.

The image doesn't last long. There's so much to do. 

She feels a hand on the small of her back and she turns; Maribelle has stepped up beside her. Ada feels a surge of gratefulness for both her friend's watchful eye and quick attention, but before she can get the words out, Maribelle descends on her with fussing:

"Darling!" she says. "How are you? Are you alright?"

Ada allows Maribelle to envelope her in a very ginger hug –– hopefully the last time she'll hug someone covered in her husband's blood today, but it's a good hug to get nonetheless. Still, Ada's eyes return to Chrom soon enough.

"I'm fine," she says. "It's him I'm worried about. How bad is it?"

"There's a fair bit of muscle damage, but it's clean," Maribelle says. She scoots away and peels off her apron; it was evidently put on after the attack, so it's done precious little to protect her in the first place. "With some luck he'll walk, if it recovers well."

"How long, do you think?"

"We'll have to see. I don't want to heal it just yet, or close it up."

"Because the wound may have soured," Ada says. 

Maribelle nods.

They've both seen that happen a number of times; desperate situations on battlefields requiring a wound be closed immediately to save someone from bleeding out, only for the soldier to die from soured blood within days. A few times, they'd been able to open it up again later to clean it out enough, but other times…

Ada pushes that thought away.

"Do you think there's risk of that?"

"There's always a chance," Maribelle says. "I've already cleaned the wound, but I'm still waiting on better supplies from the apothecary. I'd like to leave it open for a few days to keep flushing it out."

"He's not going to like that."

Maribelle scoffs, and she shakes her head so vigorously that a few blonde curls escape their ribbons. Her hair has been hastily retied at some point to get it further out of her face. Ada has never see her so dissheveled so close to home.

"I don't care what he likes!" Maribelle declares. She sweeps across the floor to the nearest washbasin and begins washing her hands clean. The water runs the colour of rust, dried blood. "If he had his way he'd be downstairs right now, tromping around on a torn leg, chasing down the assassin himself! I won't hear any fussing about it, not even when I'm peeling the scab off again."

"I'm glad he has you looking after him, at least for now," Ada says.

"He'd better be glad," Maribelle says. "I sullied my new white lambskin gloves keeping that wound together, so I expect profuse _thank yous_ from him when he's finally on the mend."

"He will."

Maribelle's brand of pettiness feels oddly soothing, and Ada likes the idea that the biggest concern here in the long run could be the fate of a bloodied pair of gloves. Maribelle finishes scrubbing her hands and dries them on her apron, and then fixes Ada with a sharp look.

"What is the plan?" she asks. "Are you going back downstairs?"

"Yes," Ada replies. "I'm just going to get my pieces into position, and then let Chrom know."

"You're not going to wait with him?"

It's not that Maribelle sounds judgemental –– if Maribelle truly disagreed, she'd just say so –– but Ada is bracing herself to convince others to the idea anyway. She would love to do nothing but lay with her husband and eke out every moment she can during his recovery, but as long as there's still some threat to him, and something she can do about it, she can't wait. There's something fundamentally impossible about turning the other cheek when she can instead strike back in Chrom's name, in their children's names.

"Do you think it's a bad idea?"

"No," Maribelle says. "I think it's an appropriate one. But you, at court without him?"

"I'd much prefer you were here," Ada says, heading her off. "I want someone close to our family taking care of him, and Libra isn't near as talented a healer as you are. I can navigate court on my own."

Maribelle's gaze remains sharp, perhaps even doubtful, but she nods.

"Libra always was more focused on the soul than the body," she says. "But he'll do very well in a pinch, if you need help downstairs."

"Do you feel rusty?" Ada asks. She has to. "It's been…"

"Years?" Maribelle says. "Trust me, darling. Working for the magistrate hasn't dulled me one bit."

"Good," Ada says. It does bring her some comfort.

"But it doesn't do much for your lack of guidance," Maribelle says, pointedly. "Who else are you bringing with you? Frederick, I hope?"

"Much as I would like to, I'm not bringing Frederick," Ada says. "I want Frederick here with Chrom, too, and my children. He's discussing the plan with now Cherche."

"Cherche is far more familiar with Valmese court than Ylissean court," Maribelle says. She pauses, scruntinizing Ada, and then sighs. "I suppose you've considered your reasons for that, too. I trust your judgement, even if I don't understand it. But how will you convince him?"

Maribelle nods her head in Chrom's direction. Ada looks towards her husband again.

"He'll understand," she says.

He won't like it, but he'll understand.

 

❦

 

Ada returns to Libra some time after, and he's right where she left him, at the window outside Chrom's curtain. She steps up beside him and peers out at what he's looking at –– poised in the slit is his little cottage, nestled in its overgrown garden, the little home he had made with his wife and daughter. A plume of smoke rises from the chimney.

"She's still out there," Ada says, as though Tharja really would have gone anywhere, or joined them in the tower.

"That or she's left the fire going unattended, so it will set alight to the entire place," Libra says. "Burn it and everything inside to cinders."

"Is that a hope?" Ada says.

Libra shakes his head.

"I'm sorry," he says. "My concerns are quite meaningless in face of your own. What can I do for you next, Ada?"

It's Ada's turn to shake her head, and she gives his forearm a little squeeze.

"Don't worry about that, it's not a competition," she says. "I was hoping you'd like something to keep your mind off of things. "

"Of course," Libra says. 

"I want to eliminate this assassin," she says.

Libra gives a soft little huff of a laugh.

"Why did I think you were going to ask me about the children, or to give Chrom counsel, or any number of other things?" he says. "You want to eliminate an assassin. Am I to help you kill him?"

"No," she says. "You're to keep me and the rest of our party in good condition."

"Our party?" Libra queries.

"Cherche and Lon'qu," Ada specifies.

Libra mulls that over for a moment and then nods.

"If we hadn't had that conversation this morning, would you really be asking me?" he says. "Surely you would have had a more strategic pick than a holy man in a situation like that. Yes, surely I'd be more useful praying at Chrom's bedside for Naga to spare him."

Ada shakes her head, firmly.

"I want the holy man," she says. "I want a holy man for the same reasons I want a foreign diplomat, and a family member."

Libra looks at her quite plainly, and Ada feels completely –– almost delightfully –– exposed in that moment, her intentions laid bare in front of someone who knows how she is at war. Libra shakes his head, almost just for how amused he is, and he says: "Pride is a sin, you know."

"I'm glad to have you keeping me in check, then," she replies.

 

❦

 

Getting the tower set up for a siege is the sum of the efforts of dozens: with each passing moment into this crisis, Ada feels in her element, perhaps in a way she hasn't been in for some years. It's amazing to watch the rest of the tower fall into the same step, boxes of supplies being passed up stairs, and information passed with it. Chaos reigns downstairs; she thinks of the lines of courtiers, nobles and staff pressed against the walls when she had retrieved the children, and knows hours later the floors below them could be radically different, but the world beyond the castle near-untouched, locked away behind drawbridges, gates and guard.

It will take much effort over the next few days to keep the uproar from spreading further.

And though Ada doesn't intend to be here much over the coming days, she wants this tower indistinguishable from the camps they'd set up, night after night, on the military campaigns. People are captained. Non-priority individuals are escorted out. The tiny tower is cordoned off, mess hall here, sleeping quarters there, infirmary here, war room there, supply room there. Heavy curtains fill in for wax tent canvas, and the few servants invited to stay are coached in how to treat them like proper walls: you hear nothing that isn't your express business.

For the sleeping quarters, a bed is set up for the children –– Morgan, Ryn and the twins, all on one mattress on the floor, which the twins are carefully moved to from Chrom's arms soon enough –– and slings are set up for the rest of everyone. There's not enough for everyone, either, so sleeping will be in shifts; just as well, Ada figures, considering the guard will need to rotate around the clock anyway. The mess hall will operate twice daily. Beer and wine will be rationed, given how hard it is to lug up all those stairs, but it still comprises much of the supplies brought up.

It could be, Ada thinks, a reasonable defense… but not for long. Looking at the supplies coming in, and the bodies there to keep guard, she thinks it could hold for a week at absolute most.

A week, Ada thinks.

She has a week to put a stop to this assassin.

"Are you nervous?" Frederick asks. 

"No," she says.

"You sound nervous," he says, a little pointedly.

"Only because of what's at stake," she says. She turns her eyes to him and finds him looking a little ill-at-ease himself, his arms folded in front of him instead of behind, his jaw a little tight. "Are _you_ nervous?"

"Very much so," he says. "If he dies, I don't know what I'll do."

Ada reaches for him and pats his shoulder.

"I as well, my friend. I as well."

 

❦

 

Early evening comes, and Ada eats a bit of bread and cheese and an apple by a window, peering down at Tharja's cottage, visible only by the glow from the windows. She thinks she might see Tharja down by the window, just a vague silhouette, but she knows it's her imagination; she's much too high up to see such a thing. Even so, she wonders what it might be like to be down on the ground, in the yard, staring up at the tower.

If she were an assassin, what would she think, looking up and imagining the Exalt inside?

This thought doesn't last long. The whole five minutes she has to eat her dinner ends with an alarming noise, something like gagging. Ada looks up and watches every head in the room do the same. It's Chrom. She runs.

For the narrowest, most harrowing moment, she worries that death has come for him. 

The tower falls silent as the sound of him retching rises, more and more forcefully. Ada is at his bedside in an instant, and she grips him as he vomits hard over the side of the bed. Maribelle climbs over the other side of the bed to brace Chrom, too. He retches so violently on an empty stomach that Ada thinks his soul might come out instead.

Ada casts a helpless look at Maribelle, who says, pityingly: "It's just the aftershock, darling."

Somehow, relief is never quite as relieving as it could be, not when she's stroking Chrom's hair back and murmuring encouragement to him as he chokes up. By time he's finished and Ada and Maribelle have helped him back into his growing bolster of pillows, he seems so tired that he may as well not have slept at all.

"Well, at least I feel awake now," he says.

"I'd prefer it if you rested," Maribelle says. Chrom gives her a look ––  _you wish_ –– and Maribelle gives him a dismissive little wave before departing. "I'll give you privacy."

"Thank you," Chrom says. And then: "Gods, that was disgusting."

"That was worse than our honeymoon," Ada says, easily.

He laughs, a short, sharp sound. He squeezes her hand with surprising grip.

"I was thinking earlier that I've had worse physical experiences in my life but now I'm not so sure," he says. He sighs when she wipes at his mouth with a cloth. "Initially it didn't hurt at all, maybe just like getting punched, but when the blade came back out, I felt the muscle, and the two sides of the wound rubbing when I moved."

Ada gives him what must be a disturbed look. She's never taken a blade before, not like that, but she'd certainly never thought about that part. Chrom spies her expression and continues, as if to assuage her:

"Compared to falling on Grima's back, getting stabbed by you, dislocating my arm… tripping in the dark that one time… it's not that bad."

"Can you _stop_ getting injured?" she asks. She brushes his hair back and he fixes her with an amused look; he seems very lucid, suddenly, very awake –– he reaches up to catch her hand and stop her from tousling his hair, and instead he holds the back of her hand to his cheek. "Gods, Chrom. I'm grateful but how are you alive?"

"It's sheer will power," Chrom says. 

"You're stubborn, alright."

"And nauseous," he admits. 

It seems he's so far gone from the adrenaline of the day's events that the pain is now impossibly to distract from. Chrom has never been one to lounge in bed (at least not if it doesn't involve some degree of nudity) and it wouldn't be unusual for Ada to find him doing push-ups at the bed side. Keeping him in place is almost a full time job.

It's a good thing Maribelle is much more aggressive than she is.

"You're going to have to take up reading or something just to keep your mind occupied," Ada says. "Here."

She grabs at the water bucket and cloth. He's drenched in sweat again; she hadn't known it was possible for one man to contain so much moisture. Time and time again she wrings out the cloth, daubing his forehead and wiping down his chest.

"I don't have to read," Chrom says. "We said tonight. You didn't happen to grab that book when you were evacuating, did you?"

"You must not be feeling _that_ bad, if that's what you're thinking about," Ada teases, and she smiles even though she feels tired to her bones. She wrings out the washcloth and water dribbles down to her elbows. "And even if I did have it with me right now, I don't want you straining yourself, love."

"That's on me," Chrom says. He shifts up on an elbow, somewhat laboriously, and he reaches to wind two fingers into the hem of her shirt. Ada feels him tug it up, towards him, and she regrets having to discourage him when really, she wishes she could indulge him just as much as he does. She thinks: _what if he dies? What if this is the last chance?_

She pushes that away.

"Chrom," she murmurs, as her shirt creeps up her ribs. Her eyes flick to the heavy curtains, and so do his. For a moment, they both listen to the bustle of people still trying to batten down a castle under crisis. Chrom's fingers slacken, and her shirt falls. Ada watches his expression sober a little.

"I feel like hell but I could still make love to you," he tells her.

"I know," she says, a little wryly.

There are people talking outside the curtain, and both of them fall silent when the voices come particularly close. Chrom settles a hand on her shoulder, and Ada briefly lays a hand overtop his. She realizes how far he's leaning over and suddenly that hand feels more bracing than touch-seeking.

"You should sit back," she tells him. "Come on."

She eases him back and props him up better against the pillows. His eyes are a little unfocused, and she leans over him, and her bangs fall in both of their faces, but Chrom just reaches up to clutch her cheeks and hold their faces together and sigh.

Ada hears someone clearing his throat, and she glances back at the curtain. Frederick has two fingers on it, drawing it back just enough to reveal a sliver of his profile. He catches her eye and Ada nods. Chrom cranes his neck around to look.

"Frederick," Chrom says. "I'm sorry about your shirt. I'll send for your tailor when I can."

Frederick lets himself in.

"Thank you, milord," he says. "There will be no need for that, however. I've gotten worse stains out."

Chrom chuckles.

Ada slides a hand overtop his.

"Since Frederick is here, Chrom," Ada says. "We need to talk about something."

Chrom fixes her with a look that's a little more sober, and a fair bit less jovial. _Go on_ , that looks says, because _needing to talk_ never sounds good, and Ada has always loved their easy knowing, their psychic bond. It's a joke: the two of them could each crack open a book, and find themselves on the exact same page, even if one was _Tales of a Valmese Courtesan_ and the other was _The Lives of the Twelve Emperors._ To some degree, he already knows what she's going to say.

"You're in good hands here," she explains, and that is when he _really_ knows, but he lets her carry on. "Maribelle and Frederick are going to take care of you, and your children are at your side, as are many of our friends. And I'm still going to be up here whenever I can, but…"

Chrom's eyebrows knit into a frown.

"But…?"

He gestures at her for her to continue, to put it into words, to confirm it.

"I'm going after whoever did this. If not tonight, then first thing tomorrow."

Chrom glances aside for a moment, and then he says: "Eager, much?"

Ada cocks an eyebrow at him.

"Well, yes. The castle is under siege, Chrom."

"It was one assassin," Chrom says. "I think we should wait a few days, and then go down together. If this is the prelude to war with Plegia again, then I want you at my side."

"You're not going to be downstairs in a matter of days," Ada says. "Not in the shape you're in. Do you think you would have retreated to the tower if it wasn't serious?"

"Frederick made that decision," Chrom says.

"I did," Frederick says. "But I feel it was the correct choice."

Chrom frowns outright, his mouth bobbing open to protest — _I could still fight if I needed to_ — but he shakes his head.

"It's still not a good idea for you to go without me. You need me."

"I need you to be safe, and I'm open to better ideas," Ada says. "Realistic ones, given how much control we've already lost over the castle."

"We haven't lost control of the situation yet," Chrom says. "I might be –– well, a _little_ incapacitated for now, but that doesn't mean they have us cornered. Give it a couple days for me to get back on my feet; the castle will be fine until then."

"You keep saying a couple days," Ada says. "It's not going to be a couple days."

"It's not that bad," Chrom says. 

"You were just––"

"Trust me, I know," Chrom interrupts, but it's as patient as an interruption can be, a hand up to mollify her even as he cuts in. "But Maribelle said it, it's just shock. A couple days and I'll be back down at court, sorting things out. We'll find the bastard and hang him. I'm sure of it."

Ada opens her mouth to reply, but it's Frederick's turn to raise a hand. With a glance, Ada asks him if he really wants to deliver the news himself, but he fills in: "If I may, Ada. It was my failing as his knight that got us into this most pitiable situation. I should break it to him."

"Break what?" Chrom asks, with some suspicion. A dawning worry.

"You won't be on your feet in a few days," Frederick says. "It will be weeks, perhaps months. The cut was deep, milord."

"Fine, weeks," Chrom says. Bargaining already. Ada folds her fingers around his a little tighter, but he keeps his eyes fixed on Frederick. 

"There's more," Frederick warns. "You mustn't test it. You mustn't be impatient. If it doesn't heal correctly, you may never walk again… and if the wound is sullied, if your blood sours, you could lose the leg entirely."

Chrom doesn't seem to process that thought immediately. In fact, he seems to wait for Frederick to continue, to call it a joke, or walk it back in some way that makes it less serious. As if there's surely good news to follow it. But Frederick just waits, and Ada has the distinct pleasure of watching Chrom's expression fall downcast.

"You're exaggerating," he says.

"I wish I were. Chrom, you won't be leaving this bed any time soon if you ever want to walk again," Frederick repeats, a little softer. "I can't allow it."

Chrom turns his eyes to Ada. Maybe it still hasn't set in, she thinks, and Chrom's expression changes little even when she nods, confirming what Frederick says is true. Ada thinks of all the things Chrom does with that damned leg –– the confidence in his stride, the tension of his thigh as he posts up in the saddle, the jostle when he bounces a baby on his knee, its firmness when she runs her palms up it. She imagines it gone. She thinks, perhaps, that's what he's thinking too.

And then he reaches for the whiskey glass by his bed. 

Ada reaches for the bottle. It's the least she can do, top him off to ease the pain both physical and emotional alike. She reaches to fill his glass.

Then Chrom flings the glass so abruptly that Ada startles; it shatters against the floor by the bed and leaves a great wet splatter across the stone, a hundred tiny pieces of glass spread in a fan around it. A yelp arises in unison from beyond the curtain, and silence falls.

"Damn it!" Chrom shouts. 

"Chrom," Ada says, urgently. She sits away from Chrom for a second and mutters a moving spell under her breath, and the glass sweeps across the floor into a pile against the wall. Someone else can collect it later. "Don't _throw_ things."

"No!" he says. "You're telling me I can do nothing right now?"

"That's _exactly_ what I'm telling you," Frederick says. "That you must stay here and recover. It is the best thing you can do for not only yourself, but for your wife, your children, your halidom."

Frederick pauses.

"I never thought this was something I might say, but… you must retreat. At least for now."

"I don't accept that," Chrom says.

"Listen," Ada says. She crawls across the bed, settling on her knees at his side –– he winces as her weight on the mattress shifts him slightly, but aside from that he refuses to show discomfort. She takes his hands between hers. "Chrom. Listen to me."

"What am I supposed to do?" Chrom demands. "Sit here?"

"Yes," Ada says. And then, more empathetically: "Yes. If you want to recover, you sit here."

"I can't sit here while you're down there," he says. "And I don't want you to be alone down there."

"I'm not going to be alone," she says. "I have people. And it's important that someone goes because as long as the entire royal family is fox-holed in this tower, we have lost control of the situation."

Chrom looks away for a moment, and then he nods.

"I won't have them in the middle of this," he says.

"So let _me_ handle this," Ada says. She grips him tighter. "Let me ruin our enemies in your stead."

Chrom doesn't reply for a moment. She grips him ever tighter, shifting almost overtop him. She leans in close, so close, as if Frederick isn't there, as if the whole tower isn't nervously eavesdropping on them, and she drops her voice a little:

"Chrom," she murmurs. "For five years, I've focused on our children, I've focused on being your wife, I've focused on helping you be the very best you can be for this realm. But this is war. Let me do what I do _best._ "

Chrom looks at her. Really looks at her, brows furrowed and his eyes intense, even though the rest of him is near shivering. He pulls his hands from hers, and she feels a little sting of rejection, but then he takes her hands this time. His fingers go all the way around her wrists.

"If you're going to do this, you have to promise me something," Chrom says. His voice is deadly grave. He grips her as though he will hold her until she agrees, and she can feel him trembling in the process. "You have to promise me that you won't risk your own life. Not even when it's calculated, not even when you can be completely certain it'll work in in your favour. Not a single risk taken."

"No risks," Ada repeats.

"I don't care who is going to die, or what other consequences there will be," Chrom says. "Even if it's my own death, Ada. You have to promise me that. On _my_ life. _You_ live. I will not lose you again in my lifetime. I swear it, I will die before you."

Under that seriousness is fear. Ada sees it in the corners of his mouth, the little drop to the end of his sentences. His grip is firm but she feels fear from him. She braces her hands against his and she leans in.

"I swear on your life, then. No risks."

He seems satisfied by this, and he leans his forehead against hers.

"In the morning, then," he says. "I trust you. You go… and whoever they are, whoever would threaten my household, my halidom…"

His voice hardens, his gaze on her, unblinking even at this distance: "Destroy them in my name."

Ada nods.

"I fully intend to. I promise."

He nods, too. The relief is palpable on his face.

"You can go, Frederick," Chrom says. "Thank you."

Frederick nods and excuses himself. 

Ada sighs –– relief, exhaustion. She shifts to nestle in to his side, and he wraps an arm around her, to pull her in close. His skin is hot to the touch, almost uncomfortably so, but she doesn't care. She'll take him, every inch she can. For a moment they're both silent, Chrom holding her and her holding him, and he presses a kiss to her forehead. He lets out this long, easy sigh, and he runs his fingers along her spine, as if there were some normal evening, the two of them curled up in bed after a long day. 

"Your heart is hammering," Chrom says. "I can feel it through my ribs." He runs those fingers up to the nape of her neck, to her hairline, and then he catches the ribbon on her ponytail and pulls it loose.

She can't pretend it's normal, not when _everything_ is different, but it's close.

"Is it bad that I'm ready for this?" she says. "Is it bad that I feel ready for this, more willing to go to war than stay here with you? With our children? I just felt like after Grima, I could set this aside, that _we_ could set this aside…"

"Shh," he says to her, and he gives her a squeeze. "You're not that kind of woman. And I'm not that kind of man, either. For me what's bad is that we ever have to do this apart."

"I don't want to do this without you, either," Ada says. "But…"

"No," he says. "No. I understand."

Ada's heart wrenches.

"Chrom," she says.

"I love you," he says. "Don't think this gets you out of reading me that dirty story, though."

Ada lifts her face to give him a look ––  _how can that be at the front of your mind right now?_ –– but something about hearing that… Ada can't help but smile against his shoulder.

"You have my word," she says.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I always find universes with magic to have somewhat low stakes as far as medical crises and injuries go; there are a lot of spells and potions, for sure, but characters can and do die in Fire Emblem, so there must be some injuries that magic can't wave away. As such, I like the idea that magic can't clear infection, so you can't just close a wound and be done with it.  
> \- Maribelle and Frederick are Ada's usual confidantes in stories, but they're so essential to Chrom that it's an excellent excuse to bring Libra and Cherche more to the forefront for a new dynamic.  
> \- I waffled a lot on the bit with Chrom throwing the glass but I like him with a temper tbh. It's an outlet, and I think that reflects who he is as a father and an Exalt outside of war in a small but significant way.  
> \- This is an unusual position for Chrom but he will be a large focus, even when injured.


	4. God-Killers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ada and her companions descend the tower to attend court.

.

 

 

 

Once, Ada had watched Chrom topple a king. His first, perhaps of many.

"F-fool of...a prince…" Gangrel had laboured through these words, each breath pain, each word an utter waste of his last waking moments. "Your people care not for you... You are… alone…"

Ada hadn't seen Chrom's face in that moment, but she'd seen the way he'd leaned into the push. Falchion pushed through the Mad King's gut, the blade angled up; Ada watched Chrom lift, as if he could haul Gangrel to his feet again with the blade alone, but he could only jerk at the wound. Blood spurted around the entrance, drooled down the back and puddled between his legs. Gangrel gripped the blade, dark leather on sharpened edge.

"As every man lives and dies…"

Chrom was shaking. He was dripping with sweat and blood, his shoulders heaving from the adrenaline of what had just happened. Death and carnage, death and carnage, over and over again.

"… alone…" Gangrel had gasped.

Gangrel had smiled, too, his grin crooked and his teeth gnashed, and then he'd slumped dead.

Chrom withdrew Falchion and flicked it to the side, and Ada had watched a little line of blood slide off its tip and into the dry grass. And then, dispassionate and businesslike, his back still turned to her, Chrom had wiped Falchion clean with his dirtied cape and sheathed the blade again.

"Chrom," Ada had said, quietly. "Are you…?"

No, he wasn't alright. He was a walking wound then, freshly bled by the death of his beloved sister. Ada watched as he bent down over the body and took the crown from Gangrel's head. For a moment he'd looked at it, imperceptible, and then he'd whipped that down in the muck with fury.

"He'll never threaten us again," Chrom had said. He'd looked at her then, over his shoulder, his eyes dark, his brows furrowed. "No Plegian will! I swear it."

It was the end of a war. It was the tidings of another one.

 

❦

 

Ada wakes just before dawn, and Chrom is still fast asleep –– unusual for him, but not a surprise by any means. She lets herself drift towards full consciousness, still pressed to his side, and she only pulls herself from him when a crack of light bleeds through the curtain. Frederick peers in at her, and Ada kisses Chrom's cheek and whispers to him and climbs from bed. He does not stir. It's fine; they said their goodbyes last night.

"You slept in your clothes," Frederick whispers, and it's only a little admonishing. He ushers her out into the small foyer they've established; soldiers and servants alike are already up and quietly making morning preparations.

"I didn't really think about it," Ada says.

Frederick sighs at her.

"That can't have been too comfortable," he says. "How did milord sleep?"

"Deeply," she says. "You?"

Frederick shakes his head. He doesn't look like he's slept at all, and she can't imagine him bent up in one of those slings, giant of man that he is. At the very least he's in a clean shirt, but it certainly isn't his own; it's open at the collar and cuffs, too small to be buttoned. It's almost disconcerting to see him in something so casual, so disheveled.

"Well," he says. "Are you ready?"

Ada nods.

"Let me just kiss my children."

Cadia, Lowell and Ryn are fast asleep. Morgan isn't, though he's clearly trying to be, and Ada crouches to kiss each of the smaller children in turn before stopping at Morgan, who these days is much too old to be kissed so often by his mother.

"Are you really going?" Morgan says.

"Yes. Go crawl in with your father," Ada says. "I want at least one of you there with him when he wakes."

He's also much too old to be climbing in with his father, and if this were any other time he'd protest such a thing, but now Morgan gets up without an argument and gives her a very tight, very anxious hug. Ada sighs.

"Remember," Ada tells him. "You're responsible for your little sisters and brother. Keep them safe."

"Of course, Mother. Have we heard anything about Lucina?" Morgan asks, hopefully.

"Nothing at all," Ada says, but oddly, this is the least of her concerns. Her daughter has the combined mettle of both her parents, and Ada figures if she doesn't know where her daughter is, then none of their enemies do, either. Morgan seems less sure, but off he goes to sit up with his father, a book under one arm.

Ada and Frederick meet Cherche and Libra at the door. Cherche looks like she hasn't slept particularly well, either, but her long, salmon-coloured hair is combed and her armor gleams, newly polished. Despite Cherche having not served Rosanne for a decade or so, she bears Virion's house crest on a splendid navy cape. Libra stands beside her, looking much more humble in his linen robes. Good. 

"Where's Lon'qu?" Ada asks.

"Downstairs already," Frederick says. "He slept in the stairs."

Ada could ask why, but her brother-in-law is a bit of a fickle soul, and it could be anything from the temperature to being in the close proximity of too many women, or maybe even just to be an intimidating presence at the tower door. It could be one, it could be all three, it could be a dozen more reasons. She just nods.

In slow spirals they descend. It is indeed much cooler in the corridor than it is in the cramped tower rooms, and once more Ada better lights their way. They're largely silent, just the sound of soles on stone, Cherche's cape rustling on the steps behind her.

They have a long few days ahead of them. A week, at most, Ada reminds herself. There will be plenty of time for talking later.

When they meet Lon'qu at the bottom, he's fittingly silent, too, waiting by the door and already prepared. Ada gives him a quick once-over –– he's wearing a long tailed coat with a fur collar and the folded-front robes of a Chon'sin warrior, but with Feroxi leather goods. Good. She glances at Frederick and smiles, and he nods. Lon'qu just scoffs.

"Was this really necessary?" he asks.

"We want to leave a good impression," Ada says.

"Does that extend to you?" he asks, glancing up and down at her, too. Ada does feel remarkably underdressed, wearing slept-in trousers and a rumpled blouse and bodice, but she just smiles.

"There wasn't any sense in dragging all my armor upstairs just for me to come back down, was there?"

Lon'qu shakes his head too, but one corner of his mouth curls up.

 

❦

 

If there's anything changed about the castle, it's the eerie quietness. With all the windows closed and the glass covered by wooden panels, there is not even a whisper of birdsong or wind in the trees on the ground, and the few people moving about the halls are quiet as mice. Much of the servants have left, or perhaps fled –– Frederick suggests many have barricaded themselves off in the servants' quarters, too –– but there are still a great number of courtiers in the castle.

"None of the courtiers have been allowed out, correct?" Ada asks.

"No, they were barred at the gates. I heard it wasn't pleasant, at first, but the majority of them were convinced to keep the peace for their Exalt's sake. Now they're mostly gathered in the great hall, the salon and court itself," Frederick says. "They were all bedded down there last night, too."

"That many members of nobility, sleeping on the stone floors," Libra remarks. "I can't imagine they're too happy about that."

"Certainly not," Ada says. "But they'll sleep on the floor as many nights as they need to, knowing it is a sacrifice to ensure their Exalt's safety."

Frederick nods.

"For now, they will be patient," he says.

"But we'll end this quickly, of course," Ada promises. "With their co-operation."

The party's first stop is the armory. Despite the lack of people inside, it is under heavy guard –– it is, after all, as much of a trophy room as it is an arsenal. The grand foyer is studded with the spoils of war, each hung on the wall like racks of antlers might precide over a tavern. As Ada waits for Frederick to fetch her armor, she stands there and looks up at the wall and takes a mental inventory. Many of the central pieces are recent, having belonged to the Grimleal loyalists; their golden mantles and red cloaks are arranged around their seized weapons. Ada and Chrom had often personally plucked them from the hands of their fallen enemies, and now Ada imagines the assassins upstairs could target this room, seeking to retrieve these.

Her eyes fall on Aversa's crown, hanging on hooks just above her head. She considers taking it, bringing it to court with her. It could be a good bargaining chip.

"Ada," Frederick says.

She turns. Frederick has her cuirass in one hand and a bundle of clothing in the other. He hands her some of it and Ada changes on the spot, her companions averting their eyes politely while Lon'qu turns his back on them all.

"There is a dressing room, isn't there?" Lon'qu mutters.

"Oh, relax," Ada says. She wiggles into trim black breeches with gold buttons and a clean surplice blouse, and then Frederick gestures for her to hop up on the dressing block in front of the mirror.

"I can't remember the last time I armored you," Frederick remarks. "I think it must have been some time before Grima."

It _has_ been some time since Ada donned her armor, particularly outside of ceremony. Her cuirass gleams like new, untarnished after years of careful storage wrapped in paper, and it still fits quite well despite the years. Ada feels Frederick moves the buckle prong over by a notch when fastening the leather harnessing in the back, but it remains as comfortable as it could ever be, its weight snug around her torso.

"And your coat, milady," the Frederick says, holding it up, and Ada slips it on. She's never worn this one before, but it fits well, trim to her waist and full enough in the shoulders to allow a clean range of motion. There are no Eyes embroidered into it now, not anymore –– instead the narrow sleeve stripe bears the Mark of the Exalt in gold, five in total, one for each of her children.

"A true Ylissean woman," Libra remarks. "Cutting all ties, are we?"

"We can't have her in the Eyes now," Frederick says. Certainly not. Ada hops down when Frederick finishes, and he adds: "Ada."

"Hmm?"

"A sword," Frederick says. "I would feel more at ease if you had a sword at your side."

Ada gestures at Lon'qu.

“As glad as I am that there will be a talented swordsman at your side, you haven’t seen battle since Grima,” Frederick warns her. "You need a sword. I know it would please Chrom, too."

Ada levels Frederick with a look, and then nods.

"One condition," she says.

"Yes?"

"I want that one," Ada says, gesturing at the wall of trophies. All of them follow the line of her finger, and Ada watches Frederick key into her intentions all too quickly; the Levin sword is mounted on a plaque, the handguard resting on two hooks bolted to the plaque. Gangrel's crown rests above it, long polished clean of muck and blood and fingerprints.

"Ah,” Libra remarks.

Frederick retrieves it for her and holds it out to her.

"I was hoping for a proper blade, but if you're looking to get a reaction out of them, it's the best bet you'll have," he says.

Ada nods and takes the Levin sword. The leather wrapping on the handle is well-worn, the stitching darkened. She raises it experimentally; it is surprisingly light. The blade forks back and forth like the lightning magic it was built to channel, and it leaves a glittering feeling in her fingers just holding it. If she can't hold a child, she'll at least be a mage.

"I have surer bets, actually," she says, finally.

"I'm sure you do," Frederick says. "Please let Lon'qu put you through your paces at least once or twice today."

"Of course," she says. She glances at Lon'qu, who nods soberly.

A moment of silence falls between them for a moment, and Ada buckles the Levin sword into a sword belt and lets it fall at her hip. The weight feels burdensome. Ada looks up at the wall again, but there are no better ideas. It's the only blade she would carry right now, anyway. It feels right.

She feels her friends watching her, so she turns on the dressing block and steps down so they're on level ground.

"It's time to say our goodbyes for now, then," Ada says, glancing at Frederick. "We need to talk strategy, and you need to get back to Chrom."

"Of course," Frederick says. She offers him a hand and he takes it to kiss her knuckles curtly. "Take care, Ada. You do know you can fall back at any time."

Ada doesn't think so, but that's fine. "Take care, Frederick. Thank you."

"Of course. Would you mind if I borrowed my wife for a moment, before I depart?"

Ada nods. Frederick glances at Cherche and opens an arm to her. Cherche slips into his reach and walks with his hand at the small of her back. Ada looks back to the remaining two. Libra looks remarkably still and calm. He's elected to forego armor save for a sturdy pair of boots and thick-palmed gloves, and a bolt axe is hooked to his baldric.

"You haven't seen battle in a while either. I suppose Cherche and I will be the ones doing the heavy lifting when things get ugly," Lon'qu remarks to Libra. He tugs at Libra's white cloak, and Libra gently raises a hand to ward him off. "… Unless there's still some of the old fire lurking under those prelate's robes?"

" _If_ it gets ugly," Libra replies, carefully ruled. Ada appreciates that, even if she's inclined to believe there's still blood yet to shed. "I'm not sure we should be treating this like warfare yet."

"Chrom's half-dead in hiding. War arrived yesterday afternoon."

"Not formally," Libra says. He sighs. "But I suspect you'll have what you're looking for in time, too. I've never seen you give your opponent quarter."

"Even if I did, it would just be a temporary delay before Ada has him hung in the market square," Lon'qu replies.

Libra frowns deeply and glances at Ada. Ada just shakes her head.

"That's up to Chrom," Ada says.

"But _you_ would let him live?" Lon'qu asks.

"We'll see what the circumstances are."

"Listen," Libra says, and his brows knit firmly. "Our enemies would not strike against us if they had reservations about war –– indeed, they very well may welcome it. We should be thinking of our loved ones first, and avoid thinking of this as war."

"I don't care who does or does not consider it war," Lon'qu says. "Lord Chrom is near death. It's war enough for me."

"Don't say that," Ada interjects, crisply. "Don't even _think_ it."

Lon'qu lets out a gentle scoff. No apologies, of course, but Ada wasn't expecting any. Instead, Lon'qu turns his attention to Libra again: "Our loved ones need us to act, not pray."

They carry on a bit at that, and Ada feels eager to go, so she glances aside to see if Frederick has finished yet, but Frederick and Cherche are still talking quietly just inside a vestibule. Ada can’t see Cherche’s expression, but Frederick’s is openly concerned, hidden away where no one should be watching. Ada watches him kiss her — an odd thing to witness, actually — and then he drops to one knee, his hands still on hers. They talk softly for a moment, and then Frederick kisses her cuirass, right over her navel.

Hmm.

Frederick’s face turns, and Ada looks away before his gaze can meet hers.

“By time Lissa hears of any of this, it had better be over already,” Lon’qu is saying. “I’ll worry about her when we see who still stands after this.”

Libra frowns.

"But surely you should send some word," Libra says. "I would be horrified to hear from anyone else if something were to happen."

"She'll just be upset," Lon'qu says.

Cherche joins them again, smiling as usual. She looks between the men and shakes her head with an ease, a dismissal.

"Dear Lissa is better off not knowing what trouble we get up to in her absense," she agrees. "As is anyone beyond these walls. The people of Ylisse need not feel troubled by what has happened, either."

"Surely rumor is out," Libra says. "And surely the drawbridge being lifted is sign that some terrible rumor is true."

"That's why we must take haste in finding the assassin, so we can eliminate him and his accomplices, and put Chrom back on his throne," Ada says. "The people will be calm as long as this is resolved quickly, and they'll be well protected by the city guard in the meantime. Our concern is just the assassin."

Her three companions nod.

"If we don't handle this well, then we risk others being inspired to try the same," Libra says.

"Right," Ada says. "Now listen. Your devout support of the Exalt is commendable, and I am touched that it extends to following me into the fray now, even without him. But I've chosen you all for another reason: I think the three of you will trust my decisions, no matter how radical they may seem."

There's a pause. Cherche and Lon'qu nod, but Libra remains unmoving, unblinking.

"Let me be clear that I have no issue with insight," Ada says. "In private, away from court's eyes and ears, you may say whatever you wish about my plans. Gods, it's practically a tradition in our leadership."

"Oh, I certainly hear about it from Frederick," Cherche replies, a touch amused. 

"So in public, we follow your every whim, and in private, we can complain to our hearts' content," Lon'qu says. "How does that help us find the assassin?"

"The tighter we are, the easier we can spot abberence. The assassin is looking for dissent. It's the only resource they have to protect themselves with; that's why they struck Chrom in the middle of a crowd. They knew they could vanish in the ensuing chaos, and sow panic in the process," Ada explains. She pauses, and she leans into her little team with a smile. "Like when we broke Walhart's line on the Western coast, on the march towards his castle."

"You're a nightmare, woman," Lon'qu replies, but that memory still pulls a peek of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

"What happened?" Libra asks.

"Carnage," Lon'qu deadpans.

"Ada noticed the soldiers' horses looked stocky, like repurposed farm animals, and surmised that their riders were equally poorly trained," Cherche says. "She had Frederick take out one with a javelin, and the whole line fell like a house of cards.”

"It's the same concept now," Ada says, "We just have to look for the weak spot. There's always _something_ exposed."

"I trust your judgement," Libra agrees, "but I feel little comfort in my own role in that."

"That will come with time," Ada says.

Ada might not know who is behind this just yet, but she has an inkling, small but deep and promising. Their enemy is not a king or a conqueror, nor a revolutionary or a rebel; their enemy has no armies, no resources, perhaps not even any support. Their enemy is a coward, acting in the only way they can in the face of Ylisse's armies, in the face of Ylisse's good reputation. Their enemy is not half the man Chrom is, and of that Ada is absolutely certain.

It has been a long time since she has felt this sort of certainty, but it drifts over her now like a spell, and that calms the fear beating in her heart, the fear her husband will die while she is at war. Standing in the armory, the spoils of war displayed above her crown, she is certain she can carry out justice for him.

She has a long few days ahead of her, but it feels no different from marching in a thunderstorm towards battle, or leaping from a burning ship into the sea, or gripping the hilt of her sword tighter to bury steel into a death god's heart.

She'll stop at nothing.

She looks between the three of them again and smiles. Her companions will stop at nothing.

"Now. Shall we go visit court?"

 

 

❦

 

Chrom's chair sits ahead of her, empty and waiting. The magnificant throne sits at the center of court, raised upon a platform that stretches to both sides of the room, poised in front of great velvet drapes. Ada looks at it and pictures Chrom sitting there, drumming his fingers on an arm rest and waiting, waiting, waiting for his part to play in that day's ceremonies.

Once, when heavily pregnant with the twins, she'd stopped in to meet him for lunch and instead caught him as a session ran overlong. She'd never forgotten the smile on his face seeing her at the door, the way he'd beckoned her over and sat her at his side so he could listen to the closing remarks with his fingers wound around hers. He had run the callused pad of his thumb over the back of her hand, over and over.

Ada hopes he's well at this moment, laid out in bed, hopefully resting easier. There will be no hand-holding today, regretfully, but only so they have that chance again soon.

For now, she has a castle to calm, and more importantly, an assassin to hunt.

In truth, managing the castle on this level is new territory for her. Ada has observed court countless times, and she has sat at Chrom's side on many occasions, but she has seldom drawn attention there. It just has never been her office, and while Chrom's experience in court has been a difficult skill to acquire, she's not sure she would have been able to do it, if their roles were reversed. She quite enjoys making plans. She even enjoys carrying them out, ensuring that everything falls into place. She's just much happier to not have to deal with the ongoing challenges and scruples of the law.

(An ugly truth: She's not easygoing as Chrom is, she's not openhearted as Chrom is. She would be, in all likelihood, have trouble with secrets. And Ada, despite all her infinite prowess as a tactician, would not make a trustworthy leader.)

Here, introduced by the speaker, she feels her suspicions have been confirmed. Eyes follow her as she walks down the center aisle to her seat, her companions at her heels. Ada sees some eyes drift to her hip –– the Levin sword weighs heavily there, as if burdened by their gaze, but knowing it will draw out complicated emotions lightens it again. Aversa, seated to the left, won't look at her, but she _will_ look at that blade, the blade that had once belonged to her king so many years ago. Ada observes her a moment. They've scarcely crossed paths since Aversa's arrival to the castle, and if Ada had her way, it would have stayed that way. Aversa is a changed woman in some ways, but just the same in others.

Ada's attention is pulled when her name is announced. Ada steps up to Chrom's throne but does not sit. Court's many-eyed gaze waits for her to do so, but instead she just stands before it, hands in the pockets of her coat, eyes fixed on the people. _Her_ people.

She clears her throat and raises her voice:

"As many of you know, my husband, his Holiness Chrom, was attacked by an assassin yesterday," Ada says. "He was struck in this very room. He is currently recovering in private quarters, and is expected to join you all again in a timely manner."

Some murmur, some assent. It's reassuring. They won't be without their true Exalt for long.

"In the mean time, I will be presiding over court. My eldest children, Princess Lucina and Prince Morgan, have elected to defer at this time,” Ada says. “It is my husband’s wishes that I act as regent for his second daughter, Princess Emmeryn, while he recovers. Given the council is well equipped to run the nation's daily affairs, I will be spending my brief time with you focused on the safety of our own.”

Ada unpockets her hands.

"Most of the people in this room have never been on a war campaign with me, where I have served as his Holiness’s chief strategist," Ada continues. "My methods have been called unorthodox, but I’m sure all of you know I directed Chrom’s army in successful campaigns against King Gangrel in Plegia and Walhart the Conqueror in Valm, as well as against the Grimleal. I was at Chrom's side when he dealt the killing blow to the Fell Dragon."

She pauses. Quietness, perhaps curious, perhaps uncomfortable, but there's a small undercurrent of chatter she's not used to with the army. She doesn't like that, but it'll have to do.

"And still," she continues, "despite that, I’m certain many of you have only truly known me as wife, as a mother, and as a statue in the city. Put that from your minds. Today I am still his tactician; I am here to carry out his objectives."

Ada looks to the side. Cherche and Lon'qu are both looking out at the crowd, none-too-subtly appraising court. Libra, however, looks back at her; his blond brows frowning with concern, his hands folded in front of him.

“Joining me today are friends and family from near and far. Lady Cherche of Rosanne, Duke Lon’qu of Regna-Ferox and our own Libra, an esteemed monk of Ylisse. I have brought them with me today not only for my own protection, but also as dear friends."

The three each bow in turn, Libra the slowest of the lot.

"As for matters in the castle," Ada says. "You can expect to remain here until we get to the bottom of this situation. No man nor woman will leave this castle until we can be certain no more harm will come to our dear Exalt, so I thank you in advance for your patience, and your watchful eyes."

There's a more persistent murmur rising, one that sounds a little discontented. Ada isn't surprised. They are hostages, in a sense, to their own Exalt: every one of them inconvenienced, held accountable, trapped until the assassin is found. Fine, Ada figures. Each will have motivation to contribute, an eagle eye for trouble.

One man stands and shouts:

“What is to say they’re still in the castle?”

Ada takes a moment, walking the length of the dais with her hands back in her pockets. When she reaches the corner closest to the man, she faces him directly. He's from House Claive. She doesn't remember his name, but she knows he's the eldest son.

"They're still here."

"But how can you be certain?"

“Because Chrom still lives,” Ada says.

Claive almost flinches; Ada sees that reaction ripple amongst the crowd, and for the first time there is complete silence. Claive holds his tongue, lingering on his feet for a moment before taking a seat. Good. Ada turns her eyes back to the crowd at large, roving.

"Ladies and gentlemen, though the present threat is very real, this will be over before long. Assassin, whoever you might be, hiding in this very room, listening to me speak…"

She pauses. People are looking around, as if the person seated or stood next to them might be that assassin.

"I hope you understand how inconsequential you are to a man who has toppled conquerors and dragon-gods."

Silence persists for a beat, and then slowly, a small portion of the crowd begins to clap, and then it grows. Ada waits, watching, picking out who is slow to move, but soon enough even the most reluctant amongst them are clapping too.

Good.

Ada strides across the platform and takes her seat, folding one leg over the other. Cherche leans in, lips by her ear, long hair dangling between them.

"It's good to see you back," she says. "Behave, won't you?"

Ada doesn't smile, not on the outside, but inside she feels like she's glimmering.

 

❦

 

Court passes slowly. Ada is surprised by how little she needs to actually speak — much of it is speeches, representatives from all over giving their dissertations on the toils and troubles of empire, and the perks and profits of conquest. A number of Owain’s compatriots are here to give reports on his behalf — ten minutes on the building of homes, the housing of refugees, the establishments of hospitals. Ten minutes again on the remaining sects of the Grimleal, and the crackdowns upon them. Five minutes on the deaths of Ylissean soldiers, valiant people trying to secure Plegia’s borders and bring order to a struggling society despite owing nothing to the Plegian people. There’s some silence at that, and Ada watches the Plegians maintain carefully restrained neutrality. Aversa watches back — Ada holds her gaze until both of their attentions are drawn to the closing of the speeches. 

Now to socialize.

Ada takes to her feet, as does Aversa. Ada has some feeling that she is back on the battlefield; there are people all around them, getting to their feet to talk and mill about, and Ada takes the clearest, most direct path she can. Aversa meets her part-way, slower in that unhurried way. They meet in the aisle.

Up close, she looks a little different than Ada remembered — she's still swathed in dresses of gold and black, but now they're befitting a queen, or at least a _regent_ , a figurehead Ylisse has allowed. But she has evidently spent a great deal of time on tours of her nation, too, her skin rich and her hair seemingly lighter still. It looks more natural, Ada thinks, than the starved look of her days in Validar's cult.

Aversa is sizing her up too. It doesn't take much stretch of the imagination what she's thinking.

"Aversa," Ada says.

"Sister," Aversa replies. There's something there that's not quite sincere, but not quite snarky, either. She even seems careful. She opens her arms. Ada doesn't feel particularly compelled to enter Aversa's personal space, and so she doesn't. Why would she? It would only give the Plegians something to look at, some reason to think Ada trusts them.

So Ada keeps her distance. It's hard to muster much friendliness, let alone sisterhood.

"My condolences that you won't have an audience with Chrom today," Ada says.

"Hmm," Aversa says. "Hard to imagine much will be accomplished without him, but I understand he has been terribly, terribly wounded."

Ada isn't sure which part is supposed to be the harder dig. Aversa can be imperceptible, and in a way, Ada can relate to it; Aversa, too, has experienced the indignity of being known by her enemies.

Ada smiles, her teeth grit behind her lips.

"He is already well on the mend," she says. "Let us discuss the realm, then, rather than his condition."

"Did you know I was with Chrom when he was attacked? It was dreadful."

"So I heard," Ada says. "I want to know everything, including why you held his swordarm even in the face of attack."

Aversa sighs in a way that digs at Ada once more. She puts on this exasperated tone, airier than Maribelle could ever manage, and she waves it off, her long nails like claws.

"I hardly knew what was going on either. If I had known, I would have struck down the assailant myself! It certainly would have won me a little more favour, instead of being accused of…"

She gestures again.

"Well, this."

"I'm not accusing you," Ada replies. "It's my duty to find this assassin."

Aversa pauses. This is poignant to Ada, who has never seen Aversa let silence stand for any other reason than drawing attention to her own cleverness. She knows she might do something rash otherwise, and that gives Ada reason to believe she already has the upper hand.

"Ten years ago, I never would have imagined standing across from you like this," Aversa says, finally. "We've always stood beside our men, never for them."

"And yet here we are." Ada raises a brow. "Is Validar still your man?"

"Certainly not," Aversa says. "But sometimes it feels as though little else has changed. I still get the feeling that Plegians are not truly welcome at your court."

But for someone who can't imagine being at court, Aversa would certainly have the charm to carry it; it's no surprise to Ada, who has faced Aversa down on the battlefield to no less attention.

"We have a long history, Aversa," Ada says. "The past doesn't rest easily, least of all when the Exalt's life has been threatened. "

Aversa smiles winsomely. (She has to. Court is still full, and though there is plenty of chatter, she can feel attention on them regardless.)

"Does Chrom see it that way?"

"If Chrom felt Plegians were no longer welcome at your court, I would simply have you all thrown out," Ada replies. "And Chrom has been exceedingly patient with Plegia these past years, despite all the suffering Plegia has caused to Ylisse."

"You're right," Aversa agrees. "It was _so_ long ago that the Exalt marched on us every few years, spilling blood as he pleased for every percieved aggression. And wherever he went, Grimleal followed, sweeping up the pieces. But I suppose it was patience Chrom was showing then, too, when he seized our monarchy and annexed us."

Ada shifts her weight forward. Aversa is considerably taller than she is, particularly in heels, but Ada doesn't feel shy about sizing Aversa up regardless.

"Would you have war continue on, over and over again?"

"Is that a threat?" Aversa replies, almost sweetly. It's far too coquettish for a woman her age, and then she continues: "But perhaps I should accept his magnamity. He did take a Plegian woman as his wife, even while war still waged between our nations. Surely his charity towards Plegians extends to people who aren’t bearing his children! Surely Plegia isn't just some pet project for him until he finds a new country to war with. Ha! Need I go on?"

Ada finds herself breathing a little deeper, despite wanting to remain cool and disaffected.

“Why don't you?" Ada says. "You seem to have plenty of opinions on Chrom's rule."

"Do you really want me to?" Aversa asks.

"With less cheek, ideally," Ada replies. "Come, now. Do you mean the charity in providing Plegia with aid? Perhaps the charity of rebuilding –– is Ylisse not adhering to some Plegian aesthetic, are the structures styled too foreign for your liking?"

Aversa stares her down for a moment and then draws herself a few inches taller, her voice dropping. There's a bit of bite there, and she folds her arms under her generous bust.

"Less c _heeky_ ," she repeats. "Does Chrom even keep you abreast of the situation? I imagine not, if you think I'm worried about architecture."

"Ylisse won't just throw open the coffers and rebuild _your_ realm without a reasonable expectation of success," Ada says. "If we drowned your people in coin, what is to say it would go towards building hospitals? Feeding people? Rebuilding settlements? _Culture?_ "

Something in there strikes a chord. Aversa laughs suddenly, high and musical and indignant, and she actually turns away and paces a few steps. Ada follows, refusing to concede space, and she feels plenty of eyes fixed on them, and more still every time Aversa's voice raises more:

"Oh, you don't understand at all," Aversa says, crisply. "Do you? As always, you see Plegians as a collection of death-worshipping idiots who want nothing more than to hurl themselves back at war with you, but _rest assured: w_ e were a nation for a thousand years, and _despite_ the Grimleal, we had our own dynasties, our own history, our own notions of the world. We do not need Ylisse to repair that for us."

"And for a thousand years, yours was a nation that shed Ylissean blood, pushed at Ylissean borders and constantly threatened Ylisse with war. For a thousand years, your nation razed villages and murdered people, looted their homes and stole their livestock. For a thousand years, your nation did worship death!" Ada pushes forward a step. "Death! Would you have Ylissean coin fund _more_ death?"

" _You killed our god!_ " Aversa shoots back.

So she did, and there's no sense in having any remorse for it, either. Ada feels a sigh at the back of her throat, but she holds it back in favour of raising a silencing hand.

"Aversa, it _is_ a pity that the people of Plegia have paid the price of tyrant rulers and the will of the Grimleal," Ada says. "And I am sorry that you haven't always enjoyed working with Ylisse. But bringing Plegia to a state that provides for its people with dignity is an acknowledgement that evil need constantly be contested, lest the past repeat itself."

" _Evil_?" Aversa repeats.

Ada folds her arms.

"Do you have a better word for Grima?"

It feels like the rest of the hall is falling silent. Ada feels as though she is in a bubble, the rest of the world far away, but surely they are being watched. Ada steps into Aversa's space.

"Are you afraid of a future without Grima, or is Plegia so reliant on its death god that you'd sooner carry on at war, as if the past thousand years has ever accomplished much?"

Aversa reaches in, and Ada isn't sure why; perhaps it's to take Ada's cheek in her palm, or to capture a lock of her hair, but Ada's reaction comes just the same. She smacks Aversa's hand away without any warning. Aversa withdraws with a scoff, and Ada feels a strong hand on her shoulder. Ada ignores it.

“I will not see a thousand years of Plegian history become a footnote, annexed to its tormentor," Aversa says, crisply, leaning in to Ada's face. "Don't you understand that, little sister?"

"I am not your sister," Ada replies, bluntly. "And if you call me that one more time, I will truly have you ejected from this court."

Ada finds herself gritting her teeth, even as Aversa levels her with a long, hard stare.

"If that's how you feel," Aversa says, with a little shrug to her shoulders. Ada feels bubbling anger — _of course that's how she feels!_ — but she bridles it under a paper-thin veneer of diplomacy. There are _so_ many eyes on them.

"I feel it's in your best interests, and Plegia's, to not impede me in my mission," Ada says. "If you hear anything about what transpired at the attack, tell me at once."

Aversa keeps that long, level gaze, imperceptible beyond the curve of her smile, her eyes dancing angry. She withdraws a little, and then she turns away entirely.

"Aversa," Ada calls. She can't help it: "That's not how you excuse yourself at court."

Aversa glances back, but she doesn't return just yet. Ada waits; she won't budge until she gets what she wants, and she extends a hand to Aversa with a smile. When Aversa is slow to move, she offers her knuckles. Aversa glances at those knuckles, at the bare skin of the back of her hand, at her wedding band. Slowly but surely, Aversa steps back into reach and takes that hand.

"But of course," she says.

Ada looks down at the top of Aversa's head as Aversa bows to press a kiss to Ada's knuckles, and then Ada casts her gaze around the room. Indeed, everyone is watching. Good. That means the assassin is watching.

This _is_ war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- It's historically common for husbands and wives to spend a lot of time at different estates, as is the case for Lon'qu and Lissa.  
> \- Although Ada struck down Grima herself in this timeline, the people of Ylisse credit Chrom with the victory; the truth of it is not public knowledge.  
> \- Princess Emmeryn is, of course, Ryn, the young "Lucina" of this timeline.


	5. The Same Old Stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the castle's defenses mounted and the Exalt safe –– for now, at least –– Ada and her companions begin the task of drawing out their enemies.

❦

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once, she'd had tea with Emmeryn and Chrom, and felt completely out of her element.

Being in the castle sometimes had a way of making Ada feel like she'd been raised in the wild. The war campaign had felt natural, in some ways. She'd liked gathering around a campfire and eating with a trencher on her knees, and kneeling in the heather to gather wild berries on patrol. She'd never liked hunting much, but on her first trip with Chrom, she hadn't needed him to help her aim –– she'd just let him do it because she liked a reason to have him slip his arms around her and murmur in her ear, guiding her.

And it had felt natural. It had felt _right_.

A drawing room with cheery sunshine beaming through glass panel windows had been a world away, completely foreign to her. Emmeryn had worn a silk dress in the palest of blues, and with her back to the window, the sun had illuminated her long, blond hair. With a tiny gold and white teacup poised between her fingers, she'd look posed for a painting. Ada had felt positively grubby by comparison.

"Not to your liking?" Emmeryn had asked, smiling. 

"What?" Ada had replied, and then corrected herself: "Pardon? Oh –– the tea?"

(Chrom had laughed.) 

Embarrassed, Ada had confessed: "Maybe it's just too fancy for my tastes." She'd barely taken more than two sips. There were notes she couldn't place, didn't like –– spices, but something sweet too. Nothing she'd ever considered drinking before, certainly.

"Ah," Emmeryn said. She'd gestured to one of the maids, spoken sweetly: "Perhaps we can get our guest something plainer."

"Oh, it's fine!" Ada had said. "Really, it's fine."

"It's got dark chocolate in it," Chrom had said, leaning over. And then he leant closer still, voice dropping conspiratorially by her ear: "I don't like it either."

Ada had felt his breath on her ear while watching Emmeryn's mouth curve into a bit of a mischievous smile –– mischief Ada hadn't been sure Emmeryn was even capable, even if her siblings had it in spades. 

"So," she said, "I hear you can keep up with Chrom on the battlefield."

"For now," Chrom replied. "Give it some time and I'll be trying to keep up with her."

Ada smiled.

"I doubt it," she'd said. "If you were out of my sight, I think I'd get lost."

"Never," Chrom had replied, confidently. "I'd be right behind you."

And he'd been right, hadn't he?

Hadn't he?

 

❦

 

The parlour seems almost unchanged by the assassination. To Ada, it stands to reason –– it is easy to forget the danger in their midst simply by sitting in a familiar place, doing familiar things, and talking with the same people. It's never as different as you think it'll be, even in a crisis. Even Ada herself is not completely out of place, as she is well-used to making brief daily appearances to say hello and take some tea. 

But the feeling ends there. Tea is not generally taken with armed guards flanking the doors and windows, and Ada does not usually sample tea cakes in a breastplate.

She reaches to brush a crumb that has fallen on the front of her coat. It tumbles away, lost under the table.

"Are we going to be here much longer?" Lon'qu asks. She knows he's worried about another attack; it makes him a little twitchy. He's still at her side for that reason, Cherche having stepped away to chat with one of Virion's representatives, and Libra esconsced in the worried concerns of a few girls.

 "Not much longer. I think I've talked to almost everyone now," Ada replies. Everyone, and yet nothing. No one has any thought or inkling that gives her reason to believe anyone knows or saw something. She holds up her little plate. "Curried egg?"

"No," Lon'qu says, but when she's slow to withdraw the plate, he sighs and picks up the little fork and takes it anyway. "Might as well, before the riots break out." 

Ada glances back at the parlour, at the clusters of ladies and gentlemen wearing day-old finery. A few eyes meet hers briefly, politely.

"I don't think they'll riot," Ada replies. "I think they'll roll over and perish."

This lot couldn't possibly riot any sooner than they could make war. The nobility know war's utility, sometimes its spoils or the power of it, but they don't know its efficacy, its discipline. They will likely struggle for the next days –– or gods forbid, weeks –– with not having their every need served by a dedicated underclass. They'll be too busy puzzling how to boil their own water for tea to riot, much less aid them in war.

It makes the castle feel paralyzed, moored deep to the dungeons in the same dirt it has stood in since it was built, and its people immobile just the same. Her army has nowhere to march, and there's no known enemy to dog across the land towards a strategic battlefield. Her civilians –– gods, _her_ civilians –– are getting underfoot already, and they'll only take so much bossing around without creature comforts.

(Such immediate impatience, she reminds herself, is why she's never waged war on Ylissean soil. It's so much easier to just go beyond, to meet the enemy on his own lands.)

Still, war is war, no matter where they are or who is around.

"It's not even good," Lon'qu murmurs. He deposits half of the egg back on the plate. Ada finishes it herself, murmuring back: "Picky."

Her eyes drift over to Libra and his company. The two girls are maids, and they stick out like sore thumbs, but they're the only ones she hasn't spoken with yet. Ada hands her plate to Lon'qu and moves over to join them. Their voices float into her earshot; Libra is fielding questions about death, about the good Exalt's body and soul, about the sinner who would attack their Exalt. One girl has big, round eyes, and the other a mischievous look, smiling despite her fellow's concern. 

"But surely he will not die so unfairly of such a wicked thing," the round-eyed girl says, voice near cracking.

"Death cares very little for the innocence of its victims, Grace," Libra replies, soberly. "But still, the Exalt is perfectly safe in the tower." Libra pauses and glances aside at Ada. "Ah. Grace, Mary –– you must meet Chrom's wife, Ada."

Grace looks even more fearful for a moment. She couldn't be a day over fourteen, her fingers knotted into the front of her apron. Mary looks far less fearful, even bored, appraising Ada as though _she_ were royalty instead. Both curtsey.

"You two have nothing to fear," Ada says. "He's seen enough war that little could keep him down for too long. He is in sanctuary for his own safety."

Mary looks unconvinced, but Grace nods swiftly. 

"Begging your pardon, your highness, I did not mean to imply otherwise," Grace says. "I just have nerves about this, as Father Libra has heard…"

"Oh, Grace," Mary interjects. "I'm sure they have enough on their minds without having to soothe you as well."

"It's no bother at all," Libra replies, patiently.

 "Who are you?" Ada asks. 

"Servants from House Claive," Mary replies. "We were sent to the castle on an errand with Sir Wilfred, but we got caught up in these affairs. It's Grace's first visit here, you know."

"Unfortunate that your first visit should be so tumultuous," Ada says. But Sir Wilfred –– that's the Claive son she couldn't place. He'd spoken up in court.

 "I suppose so," Mary answers, a little dryly. "She'll get a longer look than she would have otherwise."

Grace shoots her companion a terribly embarrassed look, but it does little to stop Mary, who keeps her eyes fixed on Ada.

"I heard what you said this morning about the Plegians –– I watched from the balconies above," Mary continues. "I reckon the whole castle did, but I wanted to tell you that I have a cousin in Plegia who writes me often, and he says living conditions are quite poor, and taxes high."

"I'm aware," Ada replies. 

Mary's still smiling, as though she doesn't know how to be anything but merry.

"Not to say His Excellency deserved this, but if a man were to rebel against king and country…" 

Ada isn't sure what she is supposed to take from this, or whether the girl's smile is supposed to be ignorant or malicious. The look on Libra's face is mortified. She wonders what her own expression says –– if it's anger, if it's stunned. Either way, she hadn't considered inviting such commentary.

"I think what Mary means to say is… would a Plegian not be so desperate as to do such a wicked thing?" Grace supplies, her hands moving to Mary's arm.

Ada shakes her head. If this girl wants to be candid, she'll be candid in turn. 

"It's very possible," Ada says. "And not even possible, but most likely. Many Plegians are unhappy with Ylisse's rule, and someone could have decided to do something rash."

Mary looks quite curious.

"I was only a little girl the last time Plegia tried to kill the Exalt," she says. "Do you think they can't march on the city, and so this time they've tried subterfuge?"

"I can't surmise anything about their intentions until someone claims responsibility for it," Ada replies.

"Seems like a whole lot of waiting until then."

"Could be." 

Lon'qu is somewhere behind her now, his presense looming despite the distance he keeps. He clears his throat when Ada ignores him, but she watches the girls become distracted by him. Just as well, she thinks. She won't glean anything but opinions, anyway.

"Eager to get going?" she asks Lon'qu. He nods.

"Unless you think these maids have some crucial insight," Lon'qu remarks.

Ada watches Mary's eyes rove up and down Lon'qu, her cat-like smile broadened. It's so silly Ada could laugh, but instead she just comments: "Didn't you know? Plegian rebels recruit maids now."

While Mary seems unmoved by this jest, Grace looks fearful enough to grip her friend's arm, as if her silent plea could move Mary to leave the conversation behind, or apologize, or something else. There's an awkward silence amongst them all, but it's the kind Ada likes. It gives people time to reflect.

"Ha," Lon'qu comments, finally. "Let's go."

Ada smiles.

"Well, it was nice to meet you both," she says.

Both girls curtsey again. Libra excuses himself as well, and the three of them walk away, Ada flanked by the two men. Cherche is already ahead of them, waiting by the door. Ada links her arm with Libra's and glances aside at him. 

"Quite the character," Libra says, with a sigh. "I'd never met Grace before, but Mary has been in service to Sir Wilfred for some years now. She has questions for me every time I visit."

"Hmm," Ada hums. "Questions about what?"

"Politics," Libra replies. "Simple curiosity on a bold personality. Harmless."

"I'll trust your assessment, then." 

"Are we causing more scenes?" Cherche asks upon their approach. She opens the door for their passage, and glances back into the room before she closes it behind them.

"No," Ada replies. "How is Virion's envoy?"

"Lord Fersen thinks we should get it over with and declare war," Cherche replies.

"Bold words from a state still rebuilding after war," Ada remarks. 

"Oh, why not, then? There isn't a single kingdom in Valm that isn't rebuilding," Cherche says. "They'll still be back at war in a matter of years. I'm sure some are itching now, in the hopes that they'll win back some land and influence."

Ada almost laughs. It sounds like everything she's ever known about Valm.

Their path takes them towards the entrance hall, but they hear the goings-on before they even cross the threshold. There's a woman shouting –– it's the kind of shouting one does when they are very displeased, as opposed to being in mortal danger, and so none amongst their number picks up the pace. Above that general ruckus is Sully barking:

"Captain's orders!" 

They round the corner to see a noblewoman being marched in their direction, a guard gripping each arm; she protests the whole way, spilling complaints about the treatment. She falls silent the moment she sees Ada watching, and suddenly she's walking by herself again, still flanked by guards.

"She wanted out," Sully calls. "Told her if she asked again, she'd be escorted down to the dungeons instead of just away from the door."

"I knew there was a reason Chrom promoted you!" Ada calls. She comes to a halt some paces from Sully, and she can't help but smile conspiratorially. "Other than nepotism, of course."

Sully snorts, a good-natured sound to hear considering the tension. She folds her arms. Despite the changing weather, Sully is still wearing sleeveless tunics under her armor, and she looks surpringly as ease for someone who must not have slept much the previous night.

"They're going to hate me by midnight, let alone whenever this ends," Sully replies. "Was teatime a nice break from your campaign of terror? Any riveting updates?"

It's Ada's turn to snort.

"It was," she says. "Let's see… a sixteen-year-old maid thinks a Plegian is behind it. The way she explained it, it was like she had solved the whole affair."

"Your three-year-old could have told you that," Sully replies.

"Perhaps so," Ada says.

There's a beat of silence between them, and Sully laughs, looking down at her feet for an instant. When she meets Ada's eyes again, there's something of an apology there. 

"I know you're waiting for me to give you something to report," Sully replies. "But other than a few pissy nobles, I've got nothing. I've got hundreds of people combing this castle and I have _nothing_."

"Yet," Ada replies.

 "Yet," Sully agrees. "What's next for you? For us?"

"For me and mine, it's patrols," Ada replies. "Unless my quarters are prepared; if so, I'd like to get my bearings there before we begin."

Sully shakes her head.

"I haven't heard yet. Want me to send someone to inquire?" 

"No," Ada replies. She shakes her head. She'd really rather just get started than wait around –– the very idea leaves her with a tightness in her chest, a certain apprehension at the idea of waiting. "We'll figure out our patrol route and then check back."

"Where are we staying?" Libra asks.

Ada glances at Sully, who puts two fingers to her mouth and whistles. At once, the guards in the entrance hall disperse to just beyond the doorways, or at the very least the fringes of the great hall. Ada waits until they've all moved and she looks back to Libra, and then the rest of them. 

"We're staying in the solar," Ada informs them.

"Your bedroom?" Lon'qu says, clarifying.

"Do you not like the idea?" 

"It isn't exactly fortified," Lon'qu replies. "Don't you think it's a little predictable, as well?"

"That's the point."

His expression remains as sour as it always is, but after so many years with him as her brother-in-law, she's grown accustomed to the minute differences that make it a _dissatisfied_ sour rather than _unimpressed_ or merely _bored_ sour. His brows furrow the slightest bit more, his chin lifted as if to say her point is not just bad, but _stupid_.

It's fine. She'd expected this from him and so she feels unbothered. In truth, his stubbornness is why she was both reluctant and set on having him as a part of her team. It's just that the solar being part of her plan won't do much to make it less of a stupid plan in his eyes.

"Do you _enjoy_ making my job difficult?" he asks. "Any assassin in this castle will know exactly where you're bedding down."

"And when they do, you'll cut them down," Ada replies.

She can see his arguments on his face. He can't be vigilant all the time, and how can he and Cherche be charged with protecting her if the one place they can rest is also an obvious target for assassins? But he doesn't say any of those things. He doesn't need to.

He just shakes his head, muttering something under his breath.

"I'm fine with that plan," Cherche says. "The sooner they come to us, the sooner we can eliminate them. What's a few nights of poor sleep?"

Lon'qu doesn't look any less unimpressed, but Cherche's smile is disarmingly calm, and he breathes out a long, exasperated sigh.

"By all means," he says. "Whatever the Lady desires."

There's a beat of silence and Ada feels Libra's eyes on the side of her face, so she glances his way. He looks calm, too. Prepared.

"So what does this patrol entail, then? More of the same?" he asks.

"Yes," Ada says. She turns her eyes to Sully."And I want certain parts of it completely unguarded. Spots that might make for good ambushes against us."

Sully raises a brow, but she nods. 

"You two have your work cut out for you," she says.

("Three," Libra sighs, largely under his breath.)

"She'll be well protected," Cherche says.

 

❦

 

Ada has a path laid out. She hasn't told anyone, but she's sure within a single tour, her party will have it well memorized, and so will any assassin watching them. In truth, she's had this path laid out for years, since well before this castle was her home. When the Plegian army stormed the castle to kill Chrom and Emmeryn all those years ago, Ada had learned a lot about the castle.

Truth be told, Ylisstol's castle has many weaknesses.

She had known there would be some eventuality where her knowledge of the castle would prove advantageous. She'd known the defensive weaknesses of the pathway between the bakehouse and the brewery from seeing carousers slip past the castle's ale wife and into her stores on numerous occasions. She'd known that it had been foolish to build some of the castle's towers with squared corners because once she'd read about burrowing under corners to topple them, and she'd seen the consequences of Walhart's army putting it to use with her own eyes. She'd known that there was a certain hubris in having such a large chapel with all its stained glass windows, too expensively produced to ever cover with stronger, more defensive wooden shutters. As all castles learned sooner or later, one century or another, there would eventually be some enemy all-too-eager to thumb their nose at a dragon-god and commit the barbary of attacking a religious shelter.

For every innovative idea Ada had ever had –– training pegasus to fly into the dark, breaking an enemy dam connected to a latrine system, turning ships into flaming battering rams –– she's sure there's a use, an eventual cause, to put it to play. What about that time they'd run short on arrows and sent a boat out with bales of hay to catch enemy fire? What about that time she'd had their army retreat on foot over an icy lake so that her opponent's mounted legion would follow and fall through?

Some could call this information evidence of some paranoid belief that it _would_ happen someday; Ada has certainly heard that before, sometimes from the very people who had benefited from her unusual approach to warfare. She figures she may never need any of this, but a _could_ is enough reason to at least consider it.

After all, she has to do _some_ mental exercise while mothering five children, playing wife to the Exalt, and sitting in the parlor listening to household affairs. It won't always be peacetime, and she certainly never wants to see war within Ylisse's borders, so it makes sense to be prepared.

Not like now. She's not even sure if she's prepared enough.

Now, like the parlor room, the castle is different. The same old stone, the same old routes she's traced over and over again for so many years, the same paintings adorning the walls and the same spots with creaky steps, and yet the halls feel as cold. Far and away, somewhere else, even if it's buried in the self-same ground.

But no matter how different it is, no matter how eerie to walk its halls, she'd rather run endless laps around the castle than wait. As they take their first tour of the castle, Ada finds herself hoping whoever stuck a dagger in her husband will try her next, and then she'll put a stop to this. Just like that.

But that's rash, to say the least, and more than a little arrogant. Ada has been accused of blithe self-belief before, but has she ever crossed over into _arrogance_?

_Is_ it arrogance, to think an assassin should want to stick at knife in her at least as much as him?

Or is it fear –– the thought that what happened to him will just happen to him, and perhaps he'll die and she'll have no excuse to follow? Was that how he had felt when she had went away for a little while? She could never follow and leave their children, just as he never could, but it's easier to be arrogant than fearful.

She pushes away that thought. She must be vigilant. She must find solutions, not stew in her own fear. And so Ada looks around her, to draw some feeling that this castle is her home and not a twisted game of cat and mouse: they're in one of the portrait halls, the walls lined with framed paintings of Chrom's kin. His kin are her own family members, in a way, though they are family members Ada had never known, people dead for decades or more. She doesn't generally like this hall much because it makes her feel like an outsider, and yet on this very day, where so much has changed within the castle, there is something nice about seeing a line of people who have persisted despite the ages.

One gentleman, a generation or two back, has a brow that Ada immediately recognizes in Chrom. Another has his eyes, intense and inviting, and another looks like how Chrom might if he ever let a beard flourish beyond a lovely, stubbly scratch on her skin when he leans in to nuzzle her some mornings. Their shared Chrom-ness is heartening. Chrom persists.

She breathes in. Yes, that thought will do.

"My," Cherche says, suddenly. "That's pretty. Is that the one you sat for a few weeks ago?"

Ada follows Cherche's gaze to a large painting, newly hung. While Cherche slows to look, Ada keeps walking; she's looked at it enough, bored of the details of her own self rendered in linseed oil and verdigris, surrounded by their flock of children, all but one with Chrom's dark hair. Ada had laughed with the painter: every time one of Chrom's children is painted, Ylisse must call for lapis lazuli to be mined from over the sea. How fortunate, then, that Cadia at least has her mother's colouring, calling only for cheaper pigments made from copper and lead.

"Yes," Ada says. "I only sat for the last session though. They had a maid sit in for the first few as to not waste my time."

"I thought so," Cherche remarks. "Did the children sit?"

"More or less," Ada says. "Have you ever sat for one?"

"Frederick is shy," Cherche says, with a touch of a smile. "I should like to, someday, but convincing both Frederick and my son to sit would be impossible."

Ada slows to a stop when she realizes Libra has stopped entirely to look. Lon'qu carries on ahead, affording them only the briefest glance.

"It's beautiful," Libra says.

"Have you ever had a painting done?" Cherche asks Libra.

"Not quite." 

Libra looks a little rueful, a little wry. It's odd on him, and Ada finds herself thinking of all those times she's found Libra, a conté crayon in hand, doodling something remarkably good for a man adrift in thought. She's never seen him paint.

"How does one not-quite sit for a painting?" Cherche asks, joining him to look upon Ada and her family. "Did Tharja scare your painter away?"

"I was the painter," Libra says. "We both were, I suppose."

Cherche gives Libra an amused look, and Ada chooses to glance at Lon'qu; he's stopped now too, and when they make eye contact, he gives her a very subtle shake of the head. _Don't ask._ Ada elects not to. She suspects she already knows, anyhow.

"Save the cute stories for bedtime," Lon'qu says, dully. "Can we keep moving?"

Libra lets the story fall aside, and his smile wanes a little too. For a moment, he and Lon'qu exchange looks, indecipherable but no less meaningful for it.

 

❦

 

They walk again for some time, moving onto their fourth and then fifth lap of the castle. The path is long — perhaps twenty minutes at a brisk pace, or thirty being cavalier. Ada thinks about how many laps they could turn in a whole day, and how many it might take for their assailants to catch on to a pattern. They can't be too obvious about the route, so they stop here or there to talk with guards, or to nip into a room to sit for a moment, or take a bite to eat when passing the kitchens, but the route stays relatively consistent. It's like training a dog to find a rabbithole, and then setting a trap for it shortly after.

But as nightfall comes, the castle begins to slip towards being completely foreign to her. While the castle usually falls quiet as people go to bed and servants retire to their quarters and whatever banquets are cleared away and the children ensconced in the nursery, tonight they oversee the nobility bedding down in the great hall. Ada has seen a great many things, but she has never seen anything like that before.

 Ada looks over them as they pass by with a heavy feeling in her heart. Any one of them could be sympathizers. Is it Lady Aurelia, notable for her great sympathy for Plegian refugees, even in times of violence? Is it Lord Fersen, a man who seemed eager to return to wartimes after he had profited so cleanly after the previous one? What about Duncan, who had made noteworthy criticisms of Exalt Chrom a few times? 

There's no way to sort motivations. It feels meaningless to — an assassin could just as easily hide in a broom closet and waiting for his moment, and Ada is a tactician, not a reader of minds.

She's still looking at the rows of noblemen and women bedding down on straw pallets when Lon'qu clears his throat. Ada hums her acknowledgement.

"Surely we can turn in for the night and go to your quarters," Lon'qu says.

"One more lap," Ada replies.

"Why?"

"I still have the energy for one more lap."

The corner of Lon'qu's mouth twitches and off they go. 

Despite this energy, they do move slower. After the castle has gone to sleep, there's never any sense in keeping the lanterns lit across the castle, and it feels even more abysmal now. The guards stand in complete darkness, equally likely to catch a creeping assassin as a creeping assassin might catch them. ("Set a light for the poor souls," Libra comments, but Ada isn't about to make them beacons, either.) 

So in perfect darkness, they run their loop again, passing through the hallways and across the walkway and out to the courtyard, across the lawn that Ada had crossed to Libra's cottage over a day ago –– perhaps an eternity ago, for all it feels. Their only light the moon and stars above and the glowing window of Libra's house, candles behind drawn curtains.

"She's still out here alone?" Cherche asks.

"Just a moment," Libra says.

Ada glances at him, and he's already wordlessly moved ahead of them. He trudges down the stone walkway and through the little yard gate, and up the front steps. For a moment, Ada, Cherche and Lon'qu stand together some distance away, shoulders hunched against the cool night air. They watch as Libra knocks, even when he could just go in, but after a few awkward moments, no one comes to the door. Libra returns to them, a sigh just behind his teeth.

"She's the worst sort of angry right now," Libra says, remarkably cool. "We'd best not bother her."

"Sure," Ada says.

But when she looks sidelong at Libra, she sees a deep worry on his face. She reaches over to him, her hand finding his, and she gives him a tight squeeze that he returns wordlessly before politely pulling his hand away again and glancing back at the window. Ada looks too.

There's a shadow behind the curtains, and as they walk away, it vanishes into the darkness, the candles extinguished. 

 

❦

 

They carry on across the yard, around to where it meets up with the bakery and the alehouse. There are no lights over here either. The ovens generally run all night to supply enough bread, but in the dark, it looks not like the bakery at all, ominous and unknown. Ada gets the sensation of being somewhere else, in another timeline, in a place that is not her home. It scarcely even smells like bread anymore, it smells like the nothingness of the night, where everything is sleeping, even the grass, which doesn't even dare crunch under their feet.  

When has the castle ever been so lifeless? It occurs to her she's never done anything like this without Chrom, and that alone could explain every drop of loneliness the quiet night inflicts.

"Stop," Lon'qu says, so urgent and quiet that Ada scarcely hears him. She hears the dull click of the first two inches of Killing Edge being drawn.

She looks ahead of them and spies what has Lon'qu so concerned –– She thinks she sees a figure ahead, but she sees just the black outline of a cloak, too full and dark to reveal anything about him. (If he is a "him" at all, anyway.)

"I want to talk to him," Ada whispers. He nods. 

"Stay here," Lon'qu says. He looks to Cherche: "If he overcomes me, take her inside."

Ada trusts her brother-in-law's assessment, but she curls her hand around the Levin sword's hilt nonetheless.

Lon'qu stalks off into the dark. Ada, Cherche and Libra watch him go with baited breath. Ada tries to make out what she can, even from behind Cherche's shoulder. Something long protrudes from over his shoulder, perhaps the handle of a crossbow, or a high-carried quiver. He walks with no particular sense of purpose, just slinking through the grass as quietly as a cat.

Ada thinks they would be so lucky to sneak up on the assassin that it couldn't possibly be true, but who else would be creeping around the lawns after dark?

Then the figure turns, slowing just enough to look over his shoulder. Surely, just enough to see them.

For a moment, Lon'qu hesitates. Perhaps he sees something Ada can't from a distance, but in that instant, he slows just long enough that his target has a chance to startle and bolt, conceding ground as quick as his feet will take him. Lon'qu gives chase, a flurry of footfall, and with a hard lunge he gets an arm around the target's neck. There's a struggle, some thrashing of limbs and a desperation to continue fleeing, right up until Lon'qu pushes Killing Edge under the man's throat.

"Stay still, cutthroat," Lon'qu hisses, "Or I'll end your life."

"Holy _fuck_ ," the sneak complains. "It's me, you idiot!"

Ada's sense of danger deflates immediately. She raises a hand aloft with magic fire. Everyone flinches at the bright light, herself included, but they all fall at ease just as soon. 

The sneak's hood has fallen back in the struggle, revealing a mop of red hair barely contained by a black hairtie.

" _You,_ " Lon'qu says, disgust on his voice. He keeps the sword raised regardless. "What cause do you have to sneak around like this?"

"Chrom's paying Gaius to test our guard," Ada says, exasperated.

"What?" Lon'qu scoffs. He glances back at Ada over his shoulder, though his attention never truly leaves the man wiggling in his grip. "You didn't think it prudent to tell us that?"

He knows full-well why the guard can't be informed of a test. Ada just turns her gaze to Gaius. Though he wobbles on his toes and lifts his chin to keep away from Lon'qu's blade, he smiles like a cat that's gotten into the cream.

"She didn't tell me what _you_ were up to either," Gaius says. "Besides. It's my job to sneak around. Let me down, would you?"

"Release him," Ada says, and Lon'qu does, shoving Gaius aside in the process. He resheathes his sword with a little snap. Ada just nods gamely, willing her heart to settle with the rest of her. "Any luck?"

Gaius flashes her a grin and lifts his tunic, revealing a track of friction burns up his chest and a freshly stitched wound nestled between his ribs.

“Your archers bite, Queenie.”

Ada's quite sure he could have just said so and spared her the sight of him yanking up his shirt like her toddlers do, but she just sighs.

“They’d better,” she says. “How close did you get?”

“Only fifteen feet up the tower,” he says. “Slid down the stone on my face. You owe me double for the arrow, it fucking hurts.”

“Take it up with Chrom, then.”

Gaius sobers a little at that, scrubbing his hand through his hair.

“How is he?”

She wishes she had a better answer –– she's yet to see a sunrise without his presence by her side, and yet it feels like an eternity. How bad could it get in a day's time? Could his blood sour, could he be in so much more pain? Could he change his mind or letting her go, or take fever? Ada feels so tired just thinking about it, and it makes her hope that the assassin really is around, ready to end this whole debacle at her hands.

“He’ll live,” she says, finally.

“He'd better,” Gaius says. He pauses, and falls uncharacteristically sullen: "He’s my best friend. I don't know what I'd do without that prig around."

Despite it all, a bit of a smile seizes upon the corner of Ada's mouth.

"You won't have someone to carouse with until the small hours of the morning," she says. "And I'd get too much sleep."

Gaius nods. His smile returns a bit, too.

“And for the record –– I'd do this for Chrom for nothing, not even a thanks."

Ada nods. They all know why he takes the money anyway, but there's nothing to be said about it.

"Even so," she says. "Thank you for––"

"Hold," Cherche interrupts.

Cherche is suddenly headed down the path they just came from, lance still held up. Ada drops the conversation just to watch, and she listens for what Cherche has noticed –– heavy footfall echoing bouncing off stone as people _run._

But this is no assassin either; it's Sully again, looking a fair less confident than she did just hours before. When she sees them she slows the slightest bit, and her voice lifts:

“They struck again!” Sully calls. Her tone is low, intense. This time no weapons drop. "We've got a body."

“Who did they strike?” Ada demands, moving forward. Sully pivots and falls into step just ahead of her to lead the way.

"He hasn’t been identified yet,” Sully says. “But he's freshly dead. Guards made their rounds and found him.”

"No one saw it happen?" 

"No one," Sully replies. "So you were right; they're watching our patrols and timing them. And more than that, they left a message. 

"Ada!" calls yet another voice.

Stahl and his party are up the walk, looking equally urgent and alarmed.

"Ada," Stahl repeats. "A body has been found in the Exalt's courtyard, and another in the kitchens."

"Two? Sully just––" Ada starts, but Sully shakes her head furiously.

"No! This is different," Sully declares. "We just found one in the _portrait hall_."

Silence falls amongst all of them for a moment, and Ada is grateful for it, piecing together the instances at once. Three bodies in three separate places. She mentally traces the route between them and finds herself walking until her feet tire –– there's just so much distance to cover, and so little time, which could only mean one thing.

"Three assassins?" Libra remarks, dread creeping into his voice.

Ada just nods.

"Take me there."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Grace and Mary are characters from an incredibly good piece of Canadian literature/television, Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. Mary is a staunch supporter of William Lyon Mackenzie King's 1837 Upper Canada rebellion, even though it ended when she was still a little girl. I thought she (and the more mild-manned Grace) would be neat additions for bystanders.
> 
> \- Arrow-gathering gambits have happened at least a few times in history. Zhuge Liang did this in 208 CE using boats, and Tang Dynasty general Zhang Xun pulled it in the siege of Yongqiu in 756 with straw dummies hanging over the castle walls.
> 
> \- Ada's ice gambit is a reference to the [1242 "battle of the ice"](http://www.theartofbattle.com/battle-of-the-ice-1242/) wherein the Teutonic Knights learned why they shouldn't Crusade in Russia.
> 
> \- Libra and Tharja would get up to some weird business being their own painters in a very personal self-portrait.


	6. Flesh, Blood and Bone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ada and her comrades visit three bodies, and retire after a hard first day.

.

 

 

 

 

Once –– but many times –– Ada and Chrom had laid awake in bed, completely nude, the bedsheets all tossed to the floor. Mere inches remained between them, the only cause for reservation the extreme heat of a summer night. Too hot to sleep, let alone make love.

"I can't believe she wants to end their marriage," Ada had said. She'd paused. "Well, I can. I just… things changed so rapidly."

"Hmm," Chrom had rumbled. "It's certainly… unsettling."

"Are you upset about it?"

"No," Chrom said. "It's for the best. If they don't want to be together, then they probably shouldn't stay together."

Ada rolled onto her side to look at him. He just stared up at the ceiling, pursing his lips as though he had something more to say on the matter.

"I just thought she was getting away from here so they could have some space and think it over, not so she could decide to stay separated. If I were separated from you…"

The words dwindled from his breath.

"You and I love each other," Ada said, reasonably.

"They do too," Chrom replied, a little sharply.

"Loving each other is not the same as being in love, though."

Chrom gave a thoughtful little hum, and then fell completely silent. Ada reached to him, letting her fingertips drift up and down his forearm. She'd wondered if he was annoyed with her for saying it like that, but he'd just sighed. It being an ugly thought didn't make it any less true.

"I read the other day that in Plegia, you can't leave your husband or wife for any reason," Ada said. "The Grimleal believe that you die with them."

"Is there a Plegian belief that doesn't end in death?" Chrom asked, dryly. He'd touched her then, reaching just enough to brush the back of his hand against hers, a coy little nudge. "I think that's the first one I agree with, though. I'd die before leaving you."

"Truly romantic," Ada replied. 

"It is," he said. "That's literally the stuff of all those romances we read."

" _We?"_

"That you read to me," Chrom supplied. He rolled onto his side, seemingly just to gaze back at her, his hands both finding her wrist and cradling it between his palms. "You know what I mean."

"I do," Ada said. She smiled wryly at him: "You'd wage war if we were separated for more than a day or two."

"Very true. So if you ever wanted to leave me, I'd just make it illegal," Chrom said, teasingly. And then, with a grin and a sudden jolt, he got an arm around her and hauled her up against him. A giddy cry let slip from Ada's lips and then she'd laughed into the warm skin of his bare chest. He laughed: "Oh? You think that's funny?"

"No!" she'd protested, laughing still as he wrestled her around him. She'd always loved being tossed about by him; when they'd met, he'd been scarcely bigger than her, and he'd spent the time since shedding the boyishness from his face, the leanness of his frame in favour of something thicker, more defined. She had no more desire to escape his embrace than she did his love! "I just –– I can't believe you agree with the Plegians on something!"

"So be it," he'd said. He nuzzled his face into the crook of her neck, up to the curve of her jaw. His breath came hot on her skin: "Until the death for us, my love."

Whatever Lissa may have decided, Ada just can't relate.

 

❦

 

The first body is in the courtyard, a brisk three minute walk down the path they'd come from. It is not comforting to Ada to know that while they waited at Tharja's door or confronted Gaius, one of their number was being murdered in the courtyard. The same courtyard her children play in, no less. Her stomach turns.

"They're fast," she says. She jams her hands deep in the pockets of her coat; the air feels colder still. "Who is she?"

"One of the servants, judging by her dress," Cherche says.

Indeed, she wears simple garb –– a green dress with a white blouse, all splattered red down the front. Judging by the general direction, Ada supposes her throat was slit. Her sleeves are rolled up to the elbows; maybe a kitchen maid? Certainly not one of the uniformed maids that she would know from her own immediate staff.

"We'll be figuring that out," Stahl says.

"Wait," Libra says, voice full of apprehension. "Hold the lantern closer to her face."

Stahl steps in close, holding the lantern to bathe the girl's body in light. In closer relief, Ada's heart sinks further. Libra makes a muffled sound behind his hand.

"Mary," he says. He sweeps forward, falling to his knees at her side, and he clasps her hands and bows his head to pray.

"Who is Mary?" Sully asks. "Is this the one you mentioned to me?"

"Yes, the sixteen-year-old," Ada replies. Sully gives her a look with furrowed brows, and Ada shakes her head. "I don't think she had it figured out. She might have just gotten unlucky, or maybe she was just an easy target. She'd stick out."

"If they're watching you," Lon'qu says, "they would have known you spoke with her."

"I spoke with nearly everyone in the parlor this afternoon," Ada replies. She mulls that over for a second. "But they did happen to pick someone I would definitely remember, and no one in the parlor was unknown to me other than those two."

"Do you think they were watching when you spoke with me?" Sully asks.

"Could be," Ada replies. "But why the courtyard?"

She watches Libra for a moment; he's finished his prayers, but he still sits with Mary anyway, a great rounded hunch to his shoulders. His long blond hair falls in his face, almost touching hers. In the warm glow of the lamplight, Ada can see Mary's hand is scarcely paler than Libra's, but to her surprise, the underside of her palm is marbled blue-purple.

"Libra," Ada says. "Her hands."

"She's been dead since before we passed by," Libra replies, putting to words precisely what had occured to Ada. He lays Mary's hands across her chest, tenderly, and then he reaches to close her eyes. "She was certainly moved here. That's why we heard nothing despite being so close."

"That's one way to avoid making a sound," Cherche remarks. She walks away from them, taking a lantern from another guard and tracing their steps away, sweeping the ground for signs of movement. The grass is too thick for any blood trail to give it away, but Ada's made her conclusion already. Libra is correct. Livor mortis settling in would mean she's been dead at least thirty minutes.

"She'd be easy for a man to carry," Lon'qu said. "Even a moderately sized man could manage."

"Or a moderately sized woman," Cherche notes.

"Move the body inside and have someone stay with her to note when rigor mortis starts to set in," Ada says. "I want a guess on how long she's been dead. I also want someone to find the girl that was with her and find out what she knows, and notify House Claive. See that her body is returned to her family, or, if there is none, buried with dignity."

There's a sober pause. They all know what happens to the bodies of servants, their purses too light and their names too rarely spoken to justify the purchase of a gravestone or a ceremonial burial.

"If Claive won't cover the fund for burying her, I will," Libra says.

"Your kindness is appreciated, but there's no need for that," Ada says. "If Claive won't, then it falls to Chrom. Save your money for that orphanage."

Libra just nods. Ada looks to Sully and Stahl.

"Show me the next one."

 

❦

 

The second body is in the portrait hall, in a heap under a massive portrait of Chrom. The ornate gold frame hangs askew, nearly to one corner. Ada's immediate thought is that it looks like the assassin might have tried to hang the body from the portrait itself, but the body was likely too heavy and the portrait too narrow. As such, the body is dumped somewhat unceremoniously, covered by a white drape. Grey men's boots stick out the bottom, their soles clean.

"Take it off," Ada says.

Lon'qu kneels and does so, and when he pulls back the cape, Ada's stomach drops. The dead man's arm is drawn across his face, but he has hair like a dark sea. Ada realizes that the white drape isn't a drape at all, but rather a cape. The breath feels sucked out of her lungs.

"He's been made to look like Chrom," Libra says, disgust on his voice.

"So he has," Ada says, low and unimpressed. She swallows that and asks: "Who is he?"

Lon'qu takes the dead man's body by his side and rolls him to his back. The arm falls away, revealing his face, his eyes wide open, his mouth parted in a silent 'o'. He's the Claive son, Wilfred. A pity she hadn't remembered his name too easily before; it may not have saved his life, but perhaps it might have spared him a bit of dignity before leaving the world. (She's not sure what to do about Mary, then, and she wonders if the third will be the other girl, Grace. It would be fitting, wouldn't it?)

"Wilfred Claive," Sully says. "Gods. I used to beat him up when we were kids."

"It seems he never learned anything from struggle, then," Lon'qu says. He flips the body again. "However he died, there's no sign that he defended himself."

"No wounds," Ada says. "No sign at all how he died, not even of poison. I believe at least one of them is a dark mage, and a powerful one."

They're dealing with Plegians, without a doubt. Ada feels somewhat settled for it, even if it's more complicated than a common cutthroat; routing Plegians is as mechanical to her as writing in longhand, leaning in when Chrom does, and picking up a child who comes to her with extended arms. Dark magic is familiar. Unnerving, given her history, but no less familiar.

“Well, he spoke up about the assassin being in the castle,” Cherche says. “What a terrible way to know the truth.”

Libra kneels at Lon'qu side and closes the Claive son’s eyes with his fingertips, gentle as can be. Ada feels oddly calm — a battlefield calm, a survival calm. It’s been some years since she felt like that, standing over a body. It's the feeling that comes when she knows things are getting worse before they can get better.

Ada looks up at the portrait. Chrom stares back at her. She's gripped by the impulse to talk to him, to pick his brain or at least be braced by his motivated anger, or his confidence in her skills.

"Alright," she says. "Next."

 

❦

 

The last body is not Grace. Ada is relieved for the girl, remembering her wide eyes and skittishness, but then there's a measure of dread, too. Losing her companion and her employer likely both come with some deep feelings and certainly a great deal of loss, each for entirely different reasons, and to experience them at once is hardly an enviable experience.

Instead, the last body is that of a castle guard, and this guard clearly didn't go as cleanly or as quietly as Mary and the Claive son. The guard went down fighting. Ada almost feels a perverse bit of pride knowing that, as tragic as his fall may be, he fell in the line of duty, the same as she would want for herself.

The same as she has _known_ for herself, to bring down Grima.

"No wounds on his back," Cherche remarks, sounding equally proud. "He served well."

"He did," Ada agrees.

The mark of a man who bought time for himself and his kin are all over the kitchen, too. The massive butcher-block table in the middle of the workspace is in disarray, utensils and mortars and pestels and pinch pots knocked to the floor, and a great quantity of some dried herb intermingled across the tabletop with rapidly drying blood. The guard himself is slouched at the table's foot; it appears an improvised knife did him in, stuck several inches into his ribs. His hand is clutched around the hilt. That stab could have killed him outright if he pulled the blade out, but he evidently hadn't.

"Did you get a chance to talk to him?"

"I'm going to be ill," Libra says quietly, but Lon'qu is blocking his path out, so he just sidesteps carefully and stands at a distance. Ada doesn't share in some others' willingness to tease Libra about these things, but at the very least she does sometimes wonder how he could ever put an axe in the body of an enemy and still sleep at night.

(Then again, maybe he doesn't. After all, he more than any other in this world vows to lay in the beds he's made.)

"Unfortunately he died too shortly after he was found," Stahl confirms. "He couldn't speak; he was already in shock."

"Do we know why he was alone?" Ada asks.

"No," Stahl replies. "He shouldn't have been. He may have been lured from his post."

Ada looks between the mess and the guard's body. She feels thoroughly unimpressed; if his attacker struggled to kill someone even after getting them alone, then it speaks volumes of their abilities.

"But he was alone," Ada says. "It makes me think we're still only dealing with three. Maybe a fourth at most overseeing them, but this is all so slap-dash. Grab a defenseless maid and kill her, shuck her body in a courtyard and run? Kill some nobleman who has never seen battle, throw some shoddy costume on him? Look how one of them struggled to kill a single guard."

"A well-trained guard," Sully remarks.

"Even the best could fall to an even moderately prepared assassin," Lon'qu replies, swiftly. "And even then, they didn't even manage to kill Chrom outright. They missed."

That stings a little to hear, but Ada nods.

"Two amateurs and a dark mage," Libra remarks.

"I think so," Ada says.

Lon'qu sighs; he leans against the table and lets his head drop back like a spoiled child might. “There is nothing I can do to protect you from someone who wields dark magic," he complains.

“Excuse me,” Libra says. “But Ada and I are perhaps the most learned experts in dark magic in Ylisse that Ylisse has, after Tharja. You worry about the amateurs. I can handle the mage.”

“Tharja," Lon'qu scoffs. "Forgive me if that is little comfort to me.”

"I think we'll do just fine without Tharja," Ada cuts in. "Listen. Whoever is planning this might be an amateur killer, but they have a goal, and I don't think it's to kill Chrom. I think they want to send a message."

"A message writ with blood," Cherche remarks.

"Yes, but they don't have much in their arsenal," Ada agrees. "They know they don't have the numbers to take us all on; they'd take too many risks trying to pare down our numbers."

"That's all fine and well," Libra says, carefully. "But just because they're not good at this doesn't mean they're any less dangerous. Especially if what they want is… abstract."

"I guess we'll find out," Ada says. She's not sure there's anything more to be said or done about this tableau of violence, and all that can be done is to sit and ruminate. "We'll bait them out again tomorrow. For now, it's time to make camp. I need to think."

 

❦

 

In truth, Ada doesn't really want to stay in the solar. It feels grotesque to her the moment she walks in and sees the furniture has been rearranged. The desk has been brought up from her office, already stacked with fresh papers and a crisp drawing of the castle's floor plan. A little velvet pouch sits aside it, the drawstring already loosened to reveal a collection of cast tin tokens, the same one she'd use to mark positions on a battlefield. It's strange to see her work and her bed in one room, and the floor strewn with pallets for her company. War in her bedroom. 

She doesn't like it at all, but it is what it is.

Ada leans over her desk for a moment and starts setting up tokens. She places them as she pulls them out; the great lord for Chrom in the safe tower, a knight at his side for Frederick, a cleric on the other side for Maribelle. A thief goes at its base for Gaius, and two more knights for Stahl and Sully. A pegasus knight circles the roof, flanking archers. Dozens of others follow — clusters of soliders at guard stations, a barricade at the drawbridge, a collection of villager tokens. Each makes a tiny clink as she sets it down. When she starts running out of pieces to place, she pulls the bag towards her and starts rummaging until she finds the right tokens for her party: a swordmaster for Lon'qu, a war monk for Libra, a wyvern lord for Cherche.

Her own is more troublesome. There is no tactician, no grandmaster –– not anymore. She and Chrom are so seldom separated on that battlefield that they'd simply stopped using it. There's no point in even looking for it, either; it's somewhere in Valm. One night years ago, after too much wine at dinner, she and Chrom had thrown the little token into a river. They'd laughed about it.

At the time, not having the token seemed like a petty way to say they wouldn't consider separation on the battlefield an option.

Now, it seems like hubris.

Why hadn't she considered that it was their enemies' choice, not hers?

"Ada," Libra says, gently.

Ada sets down the bag.

"Hmm?"

"Shall we disarm for the evening?" Libra asks.

"Oh," Ada says. "Yes."

She doesn't need to say more than that. The three of them get to removing their armor without another word, the silence punctuated by the soft clink of plate mail against stone as it is stowed for the night. Ada carries on arranging her map, but she finds herself at another unusual roadblock: she has nowhere to place the enemies, either, not yet.

Even so, she knows they're there. She counts out three –– two mages, she decides, and a soldier –– and she places them where the bodies had been found. It's all she has so far.

And then she feels someone leaning just over her shoulder. She turns to see Cherche standing behind her, and Cherche just trails her fingers along the back of Ada's neck to sweep her hair to the side.

"Your armor," Cherche says.

"Thank you," Ada says, absently. She stays still while Cherche unbuckles her, feeling that little tug as each buckle tightens just enough to pull the pins out, and then the weight dropping from her chest when the whole breastplate comes away. Cherche takes it away with a smile. Freed, Ada looks to her friends, and Lon'qu and Libra standing there, perhaps unsure of what to do next. How to relax.

Ada's not sure that any of them have been up here before, and perhaps that adds to the strangeness of the situation. 

"Is this room what you imagined it would be?" Ada asks.

"Fewer tapestries, less finery," Libra remarks. "But that bed… you could fit six people in that bed."

“Probably,” Ada says. “You sure you want to take the floor? Those pallets don't look too comfortable.”

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to sleep in the Exalt’s bed,” Libra replies. There's a little quirk of his lips –– he knows she's joking, she knows he knows she's joking. Still, he carries on, as if embarrassed by himself: “Or in the same bed as another woman, for that matter.”

“You don’t even share a bed with your own woman,” Lon’qu remarks.

Libra's tiny smile vanishes, dashed as quickly as it blossomed. Ada glances between Lon'qu and Libra about as swiftly as Cherche does, but neither of them say anything.

“Those living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” Libra replies, crisply.

Lon’qu shrugs and strips himself of his baldric, leaning the twin sheaths against Chrom’s favourite armchair. There’s a brief flicker of tension, even discomfort, which Cherche breaks by slipping over to the side of the bed and reaching to smooth the coverlet with her gloved fingers.

“Speak for yourselves,” she says. “I’ll keep our Queen company upon the Exalted duvet. Frederick likes a hard bed; we could have a featherbed as fine as this and he’d stick a board beneath it before long!"

“You'd best take advantage, then,” Ada says. Her tone is light but her heart feels like a stone, thinking of Chrom and their children sleeping without her, and Lucina somewhere in the city, even more alone. Afraid. She doesn't know if Cadia and Lowell are even mature enough to be able to process any of this. Do they feel preyed upon, or is the fear radiating off the adults enough to keep them ill at ease? And Ryn –– she knows better, she's been split from her mother far more often than any child should, but she's old enough to understand what's being said around her. Morgan –– there's only so much Morgan can do to cope with any of this.

Right now she doesn’t want her family more than a few feet away, and yet they are divided by stone walls and heavy oaken doors.

"Are you sure you want to stay here?" Lon'qu asks. He's sitting in Chrom's chair, cheek leant against palm, Ada has half a mind to tell him to move, but there's no sense in it. Besides: he is family, too.

"Yes," she says.

"Seems like bait to me," he says.

"How am I baiting them by staying here?"

She can see something else on his mind, but Lon'qu is unfailingly himself, his eyes dark and his mouth turned down. He's someone full of opinions but caught in the lockstep of duty –– not unlike Frederick, in some ways, but Frederick wants to please. Frederick cares about compromise, about finding a resolution that eases everyone's ambitions. Lon'qu would sooner just raze whatever enemy he is pointed at.

Ada leans against her desk and folds her arms.

"Well?" she asks.

"You wanted to know if we disagreed with you, didn't you?" Lon'qu asks.

"Then tell me what, exactly, you disagree with, instead of just implying I've made a mistake," Ada says.

"I can't speak to whether you've made any mistakes," Lon'qu says. "Because I can't pretend to understand what you're doing. My head isn't a cat's cradle of tangled threads I like to pick artfully at. I just stab people. I simply don't think it's wise to openly bait them."

Ada looks at him and waits once more for him to elaborate. When he says nothing, she raises an eyebrow and gestures for him to continue, but he stays silent.

"Why isn't it wise?" she asks, finally.

"Is it _ever_ wise to use yourself as bait?" Lon'qu asks. "I didn't think I was saying something complicated."

"Leave the strategizing to me, Lon'qu," Ada replies. Lon'qu's flat, even tone digs under her skin more than his actual words do. Sometimes he infuriates her, this man who is family to her not because they chose each other, but because their loved ones share a bloodline.

"My task is protecting you," Lon'qu replies.

"Then do your job," Ada says, "and I'll do mine."

He looks notably put off by that, and though he seems to try to pick his words next, Lon'qu sighs heavily. Whatever he wants to communicate, he's already given up, and he just waves a hand in Ada's direction. Ada decides she isn't going to pry anymore. As long as he's doing his job, it doesn't matter.

But then:

"I just think you might regret it if he dies while you're down here."

Lon'qu doesn't look at her when he says it.

Ada folds her arms. As if sitting at his bedside could do anything at all to spare his life, as if keeping vigil with a damp cloth on his forehead could keep assassins from their children or wardogs from their borders. She knows that. _He_ knows that.

"If I was at his bedside while he died, I'd spend the rest of my life regretting I didn't do everything in my power to bring justice upon his attacker."

"And who brings justice for _you,_ should Cherche and I fail to carry out your gambits?" Lon'qu asks.

"If I die, then I die having tried," Ada replies. "I could not possibly regret doing whatever I could to save my family. Would you not do the same for Lissa?"

Lon'qu pauses, and that pause is as damning as a pause could be. For a moment Ada feels indignant –– _how dare he?_ –– but then he says:

"I'd die for her," Lon'qu says. "And I'd die for you just the same, sister, but you know you're the last person here allowed to die."

"I'm well aware of that," Ada says, voice clipped. _Sister,_ like they're family in any way but marriage. It boils her blood, has her chewing back other comments in favour of keeping something here on track. "But this isn't about permission, it's not a contest to see who can make the noblest sacrifice––"

"Perhaps we need to step away from this topic––" Libra interrupts, before being cut off himself:

"She asked for input and she got it!" Lon'qu snaps.

There's a beat of painful silence wherein Libra narrows his eyes at Lon'qu.

"So she did, but I don't think this conversation is productive beyond that," Libra says. 

Lon'qu fixes Libra with a long, hard stare, and then he scoffs and stands up. He rolls his shoulders, as if itching to be up and about, and gestures vaguely towards the balcony door.

"I'm going to get some fresh air," he says, and then he's gone.

For a moment, the remaining three of them are silent. Ada runs over the day's events in her head, rapidfire, assessing how she might have made herself bait, how she might have risked anything. She promised Chrom, and she's not going to back out on that, but _realistically_ there is no possibility that she could be one-hundred percent safe-–

"Ada," Cherche says. "No one would judge you for taking this personally. I hope you know that."

"My husband is possibly dying upstairs and I'm supposed to worry about being impartial?" Ada says, as if this were an argument.

This feels stupid to Ada. In any other situation, Chrom would be buffer between them, and his words would carry weight as commander, his word law even if she had made every strategic decision. Without him, she feels ludicrously exposed.

Is it Chrom's authority? Is it the years of being a mother instead of keeping sharp on the battlefield? Is it war in their household? Is it that she decided to sacrifice herself all those years ago, and now her track record as a tactician is tainted by a perception that she might hurl herself into the abyss at any moment?

"You've had a very long day," Libra says, gently. He moves over to her. "Perhaps it'd just be better if we all went to bed and approached this with fresh minds in the morning."

Ada looks at her desk –– how many times had she fallen asleep hunched over her map, quill still in hand, and woken up to Chrom easing her to her feet? How many times had he joked that he'd started doing more push-ups just so he could effortlessly carry her to bed? How many times had she felt comfortable staying up late, _knowing_ he would take care of her and her very best ideas?

It feels empty, knowing if she carries on through the night, he's not going to be there.

"Let's go to bed," Ada agrees.

 

❦

 

Bed, Ada realizes, is the perfect decision.

It almost feels normal, to lay in her own bed in the dark, listening to someone breathing next to her. Swathed in one of Chrom's night shirts, her own body warmth becomes some fascimile of his, the worn combed cotton imbued with the smell of him.

It doesn't make sleep come to her any faster, but just like that, Ada feels herself calmed.

"Cherche?" Ada whispers.

"Yes?" Cherche replies, her voice untouched by sleep.

She feels Cherche roll over. Ada does the same, so that they're face to face.

"Thank you for sharing the bed with me," Ada whispers.

“Of course," Cherche says. There's a pause, and in the dim light, Ada sees her purse her lips, holding back a smile. Then, whisper-quiet: "Thank you for affirming to me that my marriage is not unusual. Those two!"

Ada can’t help but let out a soundless laugh, clasping the sheets over her mouth. This would be a very different atmosphere if it weren’t true, regardless of where the finger could be pointed, and somehow a sprinkling of marital instability makes the combination of mortal peril, motherhood, warfare and murder feels ridiculous. Her stomach is doing backflips. She’s sure she’ll collapse from stress by the end of the week, something she hasn’t suffered in years.

But if she doesn’t laugh, she’ll perish.

“If that isn’t the truth,” Ada says. “You know, after this, we’re all going to get very drunk together.” 

Ada mulls over a thought, and then adds:

“Other than you, of course?”

Cherche lifts her head and fixes Ada with the slyest of smiles, and then promptly reaches over to give Ada a shove in the thigh with the ball of her foot. Ada rolls away, biting back another laugh.

“Tell me you just guessed that, or else I won’t have a happy marriage much longer! I told him not to tell anyone.”

“Frederick’s honour remains intact,” Ada promises. “I saw him look at your belly when you parted. No man’s gaze misses like that otherwise.”

(Lon’qu heaves a heavy sigh through the dark.)

“I always wonder how much you know but don’t say!” Cherche says. “And even more, what you know to keep to yourself.”

“Shush,” Lonqu scolds them, his voice cutting through the dark. “If you don’t sleep you’ll be a poor watch, Cherche.”

“My,” Cherche replies, just above a whisper. “Aren’t you still fussy?”

But she settles down, curling up next to Ada once more, and Ada reaches for her hands in the dark. For a moment she just gazes into her friend’s eyes, alight with a sudden maternal joy — something so good. There is so much Cherche has yet to feel. That joy, that little scrap of pure devotion feels like a beacon right now. Cherche and Frederick know devotion better than most people she knows, and yet she's still sure it will be different for them to have brought a child into the world together.

That's the sort of thing that makes Ada never want to war again, and to also raze the earth of anything that might threaten her family.

“I’m so happy for you,” Ada whispers. “It’s like nothing else. I can't even explain it. When I had Ryn, I had never felt anything like it. It was so intense, overwhelming, even, to know that for the first time in my life, I was related to someone I could touch and hold…"

Cherche lets out a long, happy breath.

"I felt something powerful when I first 'met' Gerome, but to hold that child since birth…" she trails off. "Pregnancy, too. Did it scare you?"

"A bit," Ada says. "And two pregnancies really is enough for my body and my less-than-stellar constitution, but sometimes I just hold them and want to do it all over again.” She lets out an amused huff. "You're in far better shape than most; I'm sure it'll be a cakewalk for you."

"I hope so," Cherche says. "It seems to me about the only thing you can't train for nor practice."

"It's true," Ada agrees. “But if you think of all the things that might go wrong, you might just never try at all, and then you'll never know how wonderful it is. I'll tell you something –– the other day, Cadia was sitting on my lap at dinner, and when I finished cutting up her carrots, she took the fork from me and tried to cut up mine."

Cherche squeezes her hand.

"She has no idea how small she is, how inexperienced," Ada continues. "She just sees the world as a place where people help each other. And I know better, I know that I'm good at destruction, at death, at felling empires, but when she surprises me like that, I know that Chrom and I can create beautiful things too."

Cherche lets out a sigh, content as can be, and she takes Ada's hand to her mouth and kisses her knuckles sweetly.

"You'll be my daughter's godmother, naturally," Cherche says. "And Chrom her godfather. I would have no other."

"I'd be honoured," Ada replies. Her heart swells at the thought.

She has a much larger family than just her own to protect.


	7. Tugging on the Strings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An encounter with the enemy leaves Ada questioning who is on her side.

 

.

 

 

Dawn comes early, prying at her eyelids with the stubbornness of a child. She can't go back to sleep. She's not sure why she even tries, but she lays there for long enough for the sliver of orange on the horizon to bleed out. If only she'd drawn the curtains the night before.

 When there's no use in trying anymore, Ada sits up and finds Cherche cocooned in all the blankets, leaving her with naught but a sheet, and she spies Libra still asleep on the floor. Lon'qu is the only one awake, and he's crouched by the hearth working on starting a fire.

For a moment Ada sits there, passively observing, feeling oddly disoriented to wake up in her own bed with this motley crew of friends, and with her husband absent. No Frederick bustling around, no servants stepping in with breakfast, no children climbing into her bed and waking her by bouncing until the ropes of their bedframe sag and need to be tightened again. Gods, what a thought. She recalls that she is wearing one of Chrom's shirts, and she pulls the great wide neckline up to her nose and breathes in. It smells like him, at the very least, and that brings her some comfort. Her eyes flutter closed, and she pictures him well, happy and healthy, teasing her for sharing their bed with others. 

She opens her eyes and immediately realizes Lon'qu is looking at her, and she drops the neckline of the shirt. He looks away. 

"I owe you an apology about last night," Lon'qu says. "I suppose I've taken this personally too, in a way. My wife…"

He gives a vague shrug. Ada just nods.

"It's okay," she says. "I think we're all rattled. I apologize, too. I know you haven't had an easy time of it."

 Lon'qu just rumbles from the back of his throat, and he turns back to the fire. Ada watches him for a moment, and then she decides she'd best start getting ready. She spends more time than she'd generally like rummaging through her wardrobes and then just puts on the same leggings with a fresh shirt anyway. She can't find her hairbrush, so she just rakes her fingers through her hair before braiding it back and pinning it up in a coil. The shorter pieces in the front escape within moments, falling to the sides of her face. 

"I was thinking –– maybe you could run me through my paces with a blade again," Ada says. She glances at him. "I want to assure you I haven't fallen completely inept."

"Of course," Lon'qu says. He sighs as though beleaguered by this, but there's a certain pluck to the way he stands up and fetches his katanas –– Lissa's voice floats into Ada's mind, the one she uses for those old good-natured complaints about Lon'qu's tendency to groan for the saking of groaning. He hands her one and she takes it by the sheath.

Lon'qu glances at their sleeping comrades.

"Balcony," he suggests.

"Sure," she says. "Did you get much sleep?"

"Fair enough. We split the watch three-ways," Lon'qu says, holding the door open for her and then closing it behind him after he follows her through. "I imagine Libra will sleep late; he had the last watch. I wonder what was the point in going back to bed at all."

"Let him be," Ada says. "I confronted him about Tharja the morning this all started, he has enough on his mind."

Lon'qu shakes his head and gestures at her with his sheathed katana. Ada takes up a stance, a foot ahead and stance wide, her own sheathed katana angled aside. Lon’qu scoffs — almost a laugh. 

“Advance on me,” he says.

“You don’t get to choose,” she says. "I'll wait like this all day."

He’s confident, but not a fool. Even he fears something in battle. He steps in to strike and she pivots, catching his sheath with a clunk, and she immediately steps forward. Their "blades" slide together, and Ada goes weak, twirling the sword back and over to come in in the opposite side. Lon’qu catches her quickly but hard, his arms strong. His movement is so short and effortless she'd almost been ready to clip him.

“Gods, woman,” he says. “All these years and you start with a head strike?” He sounds a little pleased, though. “Angle higher. Might as well, if you’re going to be twirling it like a damned windmill. Otherwise you won’t get my neck, you’ll just get my collar.”

They trade blows back and forth a few times, moving in slow motion. _Half speed,_ Frederick would say, _because adrenaline will make up the rest._ Or he'd repeat: _slow is smooth, smooth is fast._ Patience with your body will improve your control over it, consistency will make you fluid and lethal in battle. If you can't do it slow, you'll never do it fast, and then you'll end up dead.

Lon'qu moves fast, and all of his motions are short, simple. It's a world of difference from sparring with Chrom, who spends half his energy on beautiful movement, complicated footwork, showy leaps and lunges. It makes him difficult to track, and intimidating at that, but not intimidating in the way Lon'qu is, where it seems _easy_ to strike him until the very last second –– when it's already too late.

Lon'qu is a god-damned _viper_ in combat.

“It infuriates me how little motion you use,” Ada says. “I’m not about to twirl a sword while you stand there centered until you deign to move.”

“Then you should have picked a more reasonable style,” Lon’qu replies.

“And learned from who? Nobody East of Chon'sin uses a katana but you,” Ada says.

Lon’qu shrugs, and the little curve to his mouth drives her crazy. 

“You could pick it up if you cared to,” he says. “You’re clever enough.”

“I know,” Ada says.

There's a pause between them. Ada resets her position, and lets Lon'qu come back to her, overhead. She parries him off, and they trade a few blows. He tries to take ground but she doesn't move –– perhaps foolishly, as it makes it harder to parry in close quarters.

“Why did you give up the sword?” Lon’qu asks.

“Because it’s only good for killing,” Ada says. She feels like she has explained this before so many times, that she shouldn’t have to endlessly repeat herself. “That’s its purpose, day or night. It has no other calling, no other use.”

“Where was that qualm when you laid waste to enemies with it?” Lon’qu asks.

“If you want to continue carrying a blade, no one will criticize you, least of all me,” Ada says. “But at the end of the day, magic has a purpose in my life that a blade doesn’t.”

"I suppose it's easy for you to say that. You were never passionate with a blade," Lon'qu says.

 “It’s true,” Ada agrees. “All I had was diligence. Practice.”

 “And you’ve let it lapse,” Lon’qu says. He swings the still-sheathed Killing Edge, almost habitually, turning it over his hand to strike at nothing. He stops six inches shy of Ada’s shoulder, precise within a hair’s breadth. “But you used to be good. I've seen you hold your own against Chrom, and he's the only swordsman in Ylisse that _I'd_ hesitate against."

 “What makes me passable at all is that I make predictions,” Ada says. She nods at Lon’qu, who steps in to the attack; Ada feels like time slows, her eyes darting over him, her body already shifting to the side, her weight moving from left to right. Lon’qu’s sheath is thrust into the space she’d been occupying. Ada shifts back as he slashes into her space, steps light, the sheath's end passing inches from her ribcage. Back again, the sheath returning to her side but missing, and this time – _this_ time — Ada brings her sword up to block.

 “It’s just tracking movement.”

 Lon’qu chuckles: “Jack of all trades, master of none! You wound but don't kill — as though you wouldn’t deign to end a life unless it were a god’s.”

 “Finally, someone who gets it,” Ada replies, smiling.

 “Such arrogance,” he says.

 "You'd know, right?"

 He chuckles –– a rare, deep thing, rumbling at the back of his throat –– and then quietly, carefully rules himself calm again. She's made him self-conscious, and he tucks the Killing Edge into his swordbelt and puts a hand out for its sister. Ada hands it over. He grabs it far up the hilt, as far from her hand as he can get.

 Sometimes she wonders how Lissa fell for this brooding, distant grouch of a man: perhaps she thought dedication was the same as love, and that physical affection could always come later. Had overcoming that distance felt romantic? Ada had felt amused in the early years of their courtship, listening to Lissa recount anecdotes about times Lon'qu had surprised her by reaching back, or revealed his sensitive inner workings. Lissa had been ever-delighted to draw back the curtain, sure she would love everything she found.

 And by no means did she find him to be terrible. Far from it, in fact. His brusqueness isn't a cover for spite, and his fear of women (as insulting as it is) is born of trauma rather than hatred. His disinterest in parties and pleasure and socializing is just a mark of a man who likes having a few quiet friendships. Is that so wrong? It may not suit every occasion, but no one would begrudge Frederick or Miriel or Panne for prefering quiet evenings by the fireside, either.

 But, if Ada is being honest, she's not sure she ever knew what Lon'qu saw in Lissa, a girl so outside his obviously preferred lifestyle that it's like night and day. She and Chrom have certainly had their theories, laying in bed in the dead of night and talking at length about the _whys_ and _hows_ of an unlikely romance and how it came to be, but neither of them have ever managed much of an answer from the man himself. And it's almost a running joke between Ada and Maribelle: by what miracle did Lissa manage to get pregnant? What on earth does he get from this? Maribelle would finally throw her hands up and say: _Where_ does _a woman get a man who will give her a baby but otherwise keep his filthy hands to himself?_

 Even when it started getting ugly and Lissa moved to the Eastern castle, no one could say why. The whys mattered less in the end than the truth that it was the best course of action regardless, and that it had changed things for the better. Lissa's recent cheery letters seem like they're from a long-lost happier person, returned after a few tricky years of malcontent, and with any luck, she and her younger son will be back in Ylisstol castle by year's end. Whether Lon'qu will be here then is anyone's guess.

 Ada looks at Lon'qu. He returns her gaze with some measure of understanding that he is being _observed._

 "I know what you're thinking,” Lon’qu says.

 "I know," Ada replies. She pauses. "Do you want to talk about it?"

 Lon’qu falls silent — not that it’s particularly unusual for him, but he's been caught this time, and the soreness seeps into the little cracks and reveals itself as plain as day.

 "You're already dealing with one man's crumbling marriage," Lon'qu says. "And even more important things still."

 "The most important thing right now is family, which you are," Ada says, pointedly. "Your life is at just as much risk as mine is. You have children, just as I do. Don't tell me that's not relevant."

 Lon'qu shakes his head, but there's a drop to his shoulders, a glance away.

 "I'm more likely to die than you, actually," he says. "Because if you die, it's only because they'll have gotten through the rest of us first."

 Ada sighs, but she almost laughs, too.

 "Gods," she says. "You can tell me _no_ if you don't want to talk about it, you don't need excuses like being _too preoccupied with death._ "

 “There's no need," he says. "Just… thank you for not taking sides. When Lissa and I decided to separate, I assumed everyone…"

 He trails, and then shrugs.

 "I know you and I aren't thick as thieves," Ada says, "but I want you to know that even if you two decide to separate for good, you're still going to be family to me. You're my sexist pig friend."

 "I'm honoured," he informs her. "Really. And I want you to know, even if you're the most foolhardy, meddlesome woman I've ever known, I trust your judgment."

 Ada smiles. She mimes tossing something at him, and he bats it away. He rolls his eyes and smiles too.

 There's a knock at the balcony door; the glare of the morning sun on the door is so bright that Ada can barely see Cherche through the glass. Ada waves and Cherche opens the door enough to peek through.

 "Frederick warned me you'd want to rise late," Cherche says. "I didn't think you'd be up before me, or else I would have risen earlier! And Libra is still sleeping."

 "Take your time," Ada assures her. "We'll take breakfast and then go to court again."

 "Very well," Cherche says. "And there's a messenger here for you."

 Ada nods and moves past Cherche back inside. Sure enough, there's a fully-armored messenger guard waiting by the door, an envelope in hand. Ada takes it and flips it over to see her name scrawled across the front in Frederick's hand. Ada feels a twinge of alarm, no news being the best news in times like these, but she also feels sure that Frederick would come in person if it were that dire.

 "From the Exalt," the messenger says.

 "Too lazy to write for himself, hmm?" she says, opening it up and reading it. It is, in fact, not even dictated by Chrom. Instead, Frederick's longhand succinctly informs her that Chrom would like her — nay, _orders_ her –– to visit today. _'I think that would do his spirits good, as well as those of your children.'_ That's all.

 "Should I send a message back, Lady Ada?" the messenger asks. "Sir Frederick had hoped you would return with me."

 Ada strides across the room, plucks a pen from her desk and scrawls across the bottom:

 

> _Wish I could. See you soon._
> 
> _All my love,_
> 
> _Ada._
> 
> _P.S. Give this to Maribelle._

 

She blows on the ink for a moment, gently refolds it, and slides it back into the envelope. Then, reaching across her desk once more, she takes a candle from its holder and clasps it between her hands, and she brings it to her lips to murmur a spell. She gives both the candle and the envelope to the messenger, who excuses himself and vanishes back downstairs again.

 "We're not going to see them?" Cherche asks. She sounds a touch disappointed, and Ada feels that disappointment radiating down into her bones. Perhaps she should have at least let Cherche add something to say to her husband, but there's no time for sentimentality right now.

 "No," Ada says. "If I step foot in that tower, I won't want to leave again, so it's best we just keep our distance."

 Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, though.

 

❦

 

Ada doesn't relish attending court again, but she knows that her enemies will be there too. Where else would they be while most of the castle is holed together to talk politics? With Chrom's tower well fortified, she's sure that court has the greatest draw. Even if they don't try to kill her or someone else, they will be there to listen, and she has a voice for them.

 Court falls silent when she makes her appearance, climbing the stairs of the platform. She unlatches the Levin sword from her hip and leans it against the throne, and then she takes a seat herself. Chatter begins again. Cherche takes up guard on her left side, with Lon'qu and Libra a little further out. They all watch people filter in, taking seats and preparing for what could be skull-numbing boredom or the witnessing of attempted –– or even successful –– murder. That's quite a range for people used to discussing politics, the abstract.

"Ylisse is so large," Cherche says, mildly amused. "Rosanne was so small that Virion's court would spend much of its time traveling, so whenever it was held in his palace, it always so lively, so dramatic –– largely just an excuse to dress up."

"I can't imagine what Chrom's court would look like if it was his fashion show," Ada replies. She can't imagine court being unfixed, either; she'd likely seldom see him unless she felt like hauling their children on tour as well. (Chrom would likely be happier traveling than being confined to a desk reading letters from regional delegates, however.)

"Chrom's court would likely hunt before playing dress-up, wouldn't it?" Cherche remarks.

 "Oh, yes," Ada says. The thought strikes her, though: "He's going to drive us all insane, laid up in bed and unable to go chase stags around the countryside."

Ada spies Aversa entering, and after a moment, she catches Aversa's gaze across the walk. Aversa smiles at her, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. Ada looks away, turning back to Cherche.

"If she lays her hands on me today, have her arrested," she says, lightly. Cherche raises a brow at her, and Ada smiles. Cherche does too. A joke, no matter how tempting it is to be serious about it.

Court is called to session, and for a brief moment while the trumpeteers play, people are silent, but uncomfortably so. The nobility are restless. Ada can see them, sitting on the edges of their seats, lips parted as if at the constant ready to throw in their own opinions. On edge, Ada is sure, because one of their number has been downed. They'll be desperate.

"Lady Aversa, Steward of Plegia, will address the Queen," goes the court herald.

Aversa walks the long aisle, and today a few of the Ylissean nobles stand as she passes, as if tempted to block her. Aversa keeps her chin up and her eyes straight ahead, but it does little to deter the handful who edge into her space, as if inviting her to start a fight instead of reaching Ada's feet. One watches Aversa pass without quarrel, and when Aversa ignores him, he instead turns to Ada furiously:

"Lady Ada, this woman represents the assassins that hold us hostage!"

Lord Fersen. A man of one of Ylisse's oldest houses, an accomplished knight in the royal army. He has warred at her side, though never in any position of particular import –– though Ada has heard of his talents, she has never known court well enough to indulge in any diplomatic nepotism, and admission to the Shepherds has always been Chrom's choice, not hers.

"Does she?" Ada replies. She thinks he very well may be right, but she's not going to say that out loud.

A murmur passes over the crowd. Aversa, poised at the foot of the throne, raises an eyebrow.

"The Exalt was attacked on the day of their meeting, upon the arrival of the Plegian diplomats in our midst," Lord Fersen says.

"I'm well aware," Ada says. She glances at Aversa, who looks significantly unimpressed. "I do believe Lord Fersen is questioning your innocence."

"I thought I was attending court, not a trial," Aversa replies. That sweetness is back, cloying and dangerous. "A trial by public opinion, no less."

Ada shifts in her seat, folding one leg over the other and looking down upon Aversa with a calmness in her heart. This is a wound she can bleed.

"It's not a trial," Ada says. "But I am sure the people have the same questions that I do –– what you, as steward of Plegia, intend to do if the assassins are your own people?"

That licks the attitude right from Aversa's face, if only for a second. She recovers just as quickly, and she takes a few steps up to Ada's throne, so close that that she's nearly in reach. This annoys Ada, but as far as she knows, it's no violation of court protocol.

"Well, then," Aversa says, and she flourishes her arms as though this were a party, and she the announcer of the next dance.

"What would you have me do?" Aversa asks of court. "Do not presume I am ignorant of my own people, and in turn I will presume you aren't foolish enough to believe that killing Grima would mean killing the Grimleal's beliefs."

"And what do you intend to do about them?" Lord Fersen demands. "With Plegians terrorizing us at this very moment––"

" _Alleged_ Plegians," Aversa cuts in. "And might I remind you there is no evidence that the assassin is Plegian, and that Lord Chrom –– and Lady Ada, here –– are no strangers to making enemies."

"With respect, your Highness," Lord Fersen says, wheeling to Ada again: "As long as these Plegians are permitted to remain in the castle, our enemies will see that as weakness."

Ada tilts her head.

"Weakness?" she asks.

"Is their presence not a signal that assassins are welcome to slip into Ylisse's court? The very heart of the halidom?"

Ada glances to Aversa.

"How many Plegians, would you say, are still in Grima's thrall?"

Aversa scoffs.

"Perhaps half of our remaining people, but it matters little," Aversa says. "If the assassin follows the Grimleal, then slaying every man, woman and child in Ylisse still wouldn't bring Grima back."

"What of vengeance, then?" Lord Fersen demands.

Aversa gazes down upon the court with no small measure of contempt. This is combatative. Ada has seen court at each others' throats before, under Chrom's eyes, but it feels a little war-like to be at the helm. (Frederick and Maribelle certainly wouldn't approve –– but Ada feels Chrom would support her in this, even enable it.) 

"Vengeance?" Aversa starts. "You could say that everything Ylisse has done in its annexation of Plegia has been an act of vengeance, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth –– some law of talion for––" 

_Stand up._

Ada's thoughts crash to a halt. She stops processing anything around her and focuses inward. What was that? _Who_ was that?

_Stand up._

There it is again. It's a voice in her head, whisper-quiet but as true as a friend leaning close to her ear. An _unknown_ voice. Ada finds herself trying to recall if Grima ever sounded like that, but no, she's sure she doesn't know this voice. It has her crawling back into that part of her brain that Grima once lived to look who –– or what –– is trying to take up residence there.

 _Who are you?_ she asks in turn.

 _Stand up,_ the voice repeats.

 _What happens if I stand up?_ she asks. She curls her fingers around the armrests of her seat experimentally. If the voice pushes her, it's nice to have something to resist with.

 _Look at Aversa._  

Ada doesn't think it's wise to do anything a voice in her head suggests, as any sliver of an opening is an invitation for a full invasion. Still, she can't deny herself the power of observation, and so she turns her eyes to Aversa. The steward of the Plegian throne continues to speak to court. Lord Fersen says something in return, and Ada watches his lips move, but whatever he says doesn't quite commit itself to her mind.

 _What happens after I stand up?_ she repeats. _What are you telling me to do?_

 _Return the sword to her,_ the voice says.

Ada glances down at the Levin sword, leant against the front of her seat. The well-worn handle is within inches of her grasp. No, she won't take it. She looks to Aversa again instead. Some associate of Aversa's looking for force her to return the sword, perhaps? Too obvious, maybe. It would implicate Aversa immediately.

Ada sits forward in her seat a little, and then looks to Cherche.

 "Libra," Ada mouths.

Cherche nods and turns away to nudge Libra. For a moment, Ada just exists with that voice in her brain, still feeling its presence there, like a pair of eyes emerging from her brain stem.

 _Return the sword to Aversa,_ the voice repeats, a little softer, a little more cajoling. A man's voice? A woman's voice? She can't quite tell; it's amorphous, but not quite genderless like Grima was. _Ada. Stand up._

Libra crouches at her side now.

"Yes?"

"There's someone trying to puppet me right now," Ada says.

 Libra's eyebrows knit, and he glances out at court. Ada follows his gaze. Though she catches the odd person looking at her, most are looking at Aversa, and certainly no one seems to be in the midst of casting dark magic. But whoever they are, they must be close enough to see her.

"I'll keep them busy," Ada says. "Go find them."

Libra nods and rises. He says something in passing to Cherche that Ada doesn't catch, and then ventures off the stage to walk the perimeter of the room. She exhales, long and slow, steeling herself. She's no stranger to voices in her head, but she feels rusty, out of pratice. Ruling her thoughts to conceal them is tricky work; if she loses that control, she'll lay her entire mind bare.

 _Who are you?_ she asks.

 _Stand up, Ada,_ the voice replies. And then, almost playful: _You want to be closer to Aversa._

 _No,_ Ada replies. _Let's make a deal. I'll stand up if you tell me who you are._

  _Stand up, then,_ the voice says.

 She feels the precarity of negotiating with them, or letting them think she'd stand by any choice but her own, but it's a gamble worth taking if it lulls them into some sense of security. It could buy Libra time, too. Ada sits forward in her seat, hands still on the edges of the arm rests. She scans the crowd. She must look obvious.

 _You go first,_ Ada orders.

Aversa glances back at her suddenly, perhaps having noticed her wandering attention, her sudden lack of imput.

"Do you have anything to interject with now?" Aversa says, imperiously, completely loathe to be interrupted. "Or does it bore you to hear that children go to bed hungry with Plegia's farms controlled by Ylissean overlords?"

Shit.

Perhaps a sensitive subject to seem flippant or ignorant of, but Ada feels more preoccupied with the voice nestling into her subconscious. She has nothing to say at first, her silence damning. But she needs to buy Libra time, so she makes her mental apologies to Chrom for creating a mess like this. She has to get Aversa back on track, back to arguing with Lord Fersen.

Ada glances at Lord Fersen, who looks somewhat thrown by _her_ sudden confusion ––  he has no clues to give her. He looks useless.

"No," she says.

"No?" Aversa says. She looks incredulous. "If yesterday wasn't indication enough, then now I know Plegian concerns fall on deaf ears."

Ada isn't sure she wants to get into any further sparring –– not when it would take her mental faculties away from the concentration due to her mind's guest.

"Go on then, Aversa," Ada says, tersely. "I'll listen."

"Oh, no," Aversa says. "Evidently you must have something to say, some opinion to give. You haven't put that brilliant mind of yours out to pasture just to raise the Exalt's babies, have you? You can say _something_ about Plegia."

"Aversa, go on with your speech," Ada says. _Return the sword, do it now._ "Please."

 Aversa looks at her with deep suspicion, and then, curiously, her eyes move to Ada's fingers wound around the armrests. Her fingers are already beginning to ache from the pressure she's inflicting on them, and Aversa has certainly noticed. And so Aversa moves closer to her, and hushed whispers rise amongst court. She looms over Ada's seat with narrowed eyes, and Ada can do nothing but look up at her with a warning look.

"What are you doing?" Aversa asks, voice low.

It feels perilous to do this in front of so many people, but she raises her hands, as placating as she can manage.

"I need you to keep talking," Ada says, quietly. She bids herself to be calm, relaxed, but it comes out between her teeth: "Ignore me. Just buy us time."

  _Return the sword._

Aversa's expression grows curious –– no less irritated, but certainly curious. She searches Ada's face for a moment. Something dawns there.

"Are you…?"

"Puppetmaster," Ada says, tersely.

"Puppetmaster…" Aversa's voice drops, trails. She looks away to the crowd. The members of court don't seem to know what to make of this hushed interlude, or the tension that has both women whispering to each other on stage. Aversa's gaze roves the crowd.

"Just keep court's attention," Ada whispers, urgently. "Libra's finding them now, he just needs time." 

 _Kill her_ , the voice says. Again, louder: _kill her right now._

But the crowd is growing restless, and Aversa doesn't move to calm them. Ada looks to see Libra's blond head as he walks the perimeter of the room, his pace hurried, his eyes searching every person. Ada looks back to Aversa.

She needs to make her enemy think that she's been compromised, that they've succeeded in getting in. She needs to make them commit, to make them stick to this plan –– they need to think they're _winning_ , so they keep trying just a little bit longer–––

Ada reaches for the hilt of Levin sword, but her hand is stayed, Aversa's firm grip enclosed around Ada's wrist. Ada feels a flicker of anger. _How dare she…?_ Their eyes meet and Ada watches something flash in Aversa's eyes, watches Aversa's lips move.

And then everything goes completely black.

 

❦

 

_Once, Robin had looked at Chrom's motionless body and felt sick to her gut, but she couldn't move, much less vomit. It had hurt to seize up so tightly, to feel her entire self locked up, a passenger in her own body— but not half as much as it had hurt to exist in that moment, with that sight._

 

Please don't let him be dead, please don't let him be dead––

 

_Oh, but he is dead._

❦

 

Ada feels something –– her head hurts.

When she cracks her eyes open, the light feels like a saw running across her head, and she closes them again just as fast. She struggles to process the sliver of what she'd seen: she's still in court, because the light was streaming through the stained glass. Between the throbs in her skull, she can process the texture under her hands, under her thighs: she's still in her seat. Chrom's seat.

"Oh thank the gods," Libra murmurs.

 " _Gods?_ " she grouses.

"Easy, Ada," Libra says. She feels his hand on her shoulder, steadying. "You're alright."

She tries her eyes again.

Though her head sings out again in discomfort, she forces herself to keep her eyes open long enough to focus. The sight is discomforting –– an empty court, Aversa a good distance away, and Cherche standing between them with her lance pointed. Lon'qu flanks Aversa's other side. Neither are in position to strike, simply guard.

"Wh… what did you _do?_ " Ada demands. She tries to stand but Libra braces her in such a way that she can't get up. She pushes him away, but his grip is firm. "Tell me!"

"I blanked your mind," Aversa replies, finally. "Just for a little while, so that there was nothing to possess, and then I dismissed court."

Fury. Ada feels fury so intensely she cannot even summon the words to her lips, and so she just blinks at Aversa. She feels Libra trying to ease her back to be fully seated, but she pushes him off entirely and he backs away.

"Harmless," Libra assures her, hands still up, placating. "She thought it to be the safest course of action at the time––"

"Safest?" Ada demands. She gestures angrily at Aversa: " _Safest?_ I _told_ you to buy us time!"

"More time to get us _killed,_ you mean?" Aversa demands. She takes a couple of steps forward, right until the tip of Cherche's lance is within inches of her sternum, and Cherche holds her ground firmly.

"No!" Ada argues. "More time to find the person who wants us all dead!"

"Just how were you going to do that?" Aversa asks, skeptically. "Hopes? Prayers?"

Ada finds her feet and walks somewhat precariously towards Aversa, feeling like the entire world is shifting under her feet at first, and growing stiller by the step. When she reaches Cherche, she pushes the lance aside to face Aversa, who towers above her.

"Libra's studied dark magic," she says. "He could have found them––"

Aversa almost laughs, something sharp and incredulous. She gets so close into Ada's space that Ada finds herself leaning back this time. Without the eyes of court on them, it's easy to feel small next to Aversa; a fair bit shorter, a fair bit younger. Less experienced in dark magic, less knowledgeable about Plegia, less a politician. And worse, Aversa seems to know it –– when Ada leans back, Aversa heaves a deep, exasperated sigh.

"He knows it well enough to find it, but I doubt he could do anything about them," Aversa says, the storm passing from her voice in favour of something firmer. "You think it's as easy as breaking their concentration and suddenly you'd be released, and he'd have the mage in a snare?"

She glances at Libra.

"Do you know how to stop them?" she asks him.

"I do, actually," Libra says. "I'm not certain that I could have done it successfully, but it seems to me that it was better than not trying at all."

"Aversa," Ada interjects, pointedly. "We were literally within fifty yards of whoever is behind this! We had an _opening_."

"Don't be stupid," Aversa says. "Invading someone's mind is a fragile thing. Breaking the connection could have left you even more vulnerable, or severed part of your mind entirely. And then what?" Aversa folds her arms. "You could have succumbed and killed me. In a crowd of hundreds how were you going to find anyone before disaster struck? What if they had you set the whole place on fire, hail thunder down on us all, sucked the air out of our lungs and killed all at court at once?"

"I wouldn't have succumbed," Ada retorts, hotly.

"I know what it's like to be puppeted," Aversa says.

"And I know what it's like to fight it off!" Ada snaps. "Unlike you!"

Ada might as well have slapped her, for all the shock that lights up on Aversa's face. She sees the same on her companions' faces, too. There's a moment of silence –– and of shame. After all, Ada has known a time where she hadn't been any luckier than Aversa, nor any stronger. Who is she to say such things?

She exhales, her head singing, her heart aching.

"Could you all give us a moment?" Ada asks, glancing back at her friends.

"We'll be just outside the door," Libra says, tersely, and the three of them turn to go.

 ("Is that wise, if they _do_ mean to kill each other?" Lon'qu asks, only to have to scoot aside to avoid being elbowed by Cherche.)

When the door closes again, Aversa is still silent. She folds her arms under her breasts, and she raises her chin, waiting. There's a push and pull there –– she deserves an apology, and Ada knows that well, but their relationship has never been as easy as that. It's hard to give one when she's never gotten one, either.

"That was unfair of me," Ada says. A minor concession, but it's about as much as she feels comfortable giving. This woman brought hell upon their lives, tried to kill them so many times, has intruded on her marriage, held her husband's wrist while he was stabbed. She's never gotten an apology –– it seems dangerous to show her throat without being met halfway.

"I'd say so," Aversa replies, icily. She pauses, and she purses her lips together for a moment, before asking: "Were you really going to stab me?"

Ada sighs.

"Not for real," Ada says. "Just enough to make them think they were in control."

"I'm not sure what _real_ is in a stabbing," Aversa replies, crisply. "But I can't say I'm surprised. I hoped that after all these years, you and I could have made some reparations… but I suppose we always have one more crisis to deal with before we can be friendly, hmm?"

"I'm tired of sparring with you," Ada says, pointedly. "But I can't just be friendly with you, not when you needle me constantly."

 "What do you mean, needle?"

Ada sighs and gives Aversa a plain, unimpressed look.

"Like during the way, you'd say things like... I only live to serve Chrom's beck and call –– that got under my skin. It did. And now…" Ada pauses. "It's hard for me to think things are really all that different when you're still doing just that."

Aversa frowns.

"I was only teasing you," Aversa says.

"Well, it just feels like more of the same to me." 

"Very well then," Aversa says. "I shall endeavor to…" She makes an hand gesture, and Ada isn't sure if it's dismissive or just a struggle to find less barbed words. "Keep my sense of humor in check."

 Ada feels like she may be visibly cringing, but it is what it is.

"And for my part," Aversa says, "I would like to feel welcome here, and not at risk of turning on you any moment. I am not the person you knew then."

 “I understand that,” Ada replies, a little tersely. “And I'm aware that I set you up back there, and unfairly at that. But the way I see it, you and I will have plenty of time to work on our personal issues with each other when this is all over.”

Aversa doesn't say anything to that at first. She just sighs, and she gathers up the front of her long skirts so that she can sit on the steps at Ada's side; she seats herself as regally as a queen. For that moment, neither says anything, and Ada starts to feely antsy. Chafed. The assassin is still out there and she's having some sort of talk therapy with a woman who she has no obligation to beyond some vague shared experience, some victimhood by the Grimleal. That doesn't make them _sisters._

“You _always_ have a plan, don’t you,” Aversa says, finally. “I know you live for that man, you'll do anything to safeguard his life, even at the cost of your own –– but what am I supposed to do if _you_ perish in this? Spend the rest of _my_ life wishing we'd found common ground?"

Ada frowns. It strikes her that Aversa is hurt –– _hurt_.

"I didn't know you felt that strongly about it," Ada replies.

“Well, I do," Aversa replies. "You're really all that's left to me."

"What of Plegia?" Ada asks.

"As you've made very clear to me," Aversa says, coolly, "Plegia belongs to Ylisse now. If I had any hope to plea for Plegia's freedom by coming here, it's surely dashed by now. There probably isn't a soul in this castle who doesn't believe Plegia is guilty."

With that, Aversa levels her with a very sobering, unsmiling look. Ada can't argue it. After all, she believes in Plegia's guilt just the same. But with that subject back on the table, Ada takes a welcome respite from the subject of sisterhood. 

"Probably not, no," Ada says. "And the guilty…"

She shrugs, almost helplessly.

"The last thing I desire is to give you or Chrom cause to punish us furthur,” Aversa says. 

“Not all your countrymen share your opinion,” Ada says. "And suffice to say, if a Plegian assassin is discovered here, it will have consequences for you, as steward to the Plegian throne. Like it did for Gangrel, and Validar."

"What would my crime be? Failing to wipe away the damage done by centuries of war?" Aversa asks. "It seems to me there is nothing but consequences for the people who survive a despot's downfall."

Aversa gazes out at the empty court, her attention seeming to drift. For a moment, she's silent, her eyes low. Ada hesitates to say anything. What could she say? Even if she sides with Ylisse, it's not untrue to her ears –– but her duty within Ylisse was never to manage nations, or deal with consequences. Her duty within Ylisse was only ever to raze whatever resisted her advancement, and she carried out her duty with precision.

She's out of her element.

"Those are things you'll have to bring up with Chrom," Ada says, finally. "When he's recovered. For now, we have more immediate concerns. We have to eliminate the assassins who threaten what little credibility Plegians still hold in this court.

"Together?" Aversa asks. And then, gravely: "If they truly are Plegian, you'll be competing with me to get the final blow."

"To prove your loyalty to Chrom?" Ada muses.

 "No," Aversa says, curtly. "To prove my loyalty to Plegia."

 

 

 

 


End file.
